Staff Python Engineer

Own your future

‍Our culture isn’t something people join, it’s something they build and shape. We believe that every person deserves to be heard and empowered. If you’re on the fence about whether you’re a fit, we say go for it. Let’s build something great together. Our client is a website, communications, and marketing platform serving more than 8,000 schools worldwide. Its products help schools connect with their communities, recruit students and staff, and support fundraising, while addressing complex requirements around data privacy, accessibility, hosting, and security. The company serves independent schools, public school districts, international schools, and universities across more than 115 countries.

As a Staff Engineer you will own the technical strategy for the platform: improve observability and operational discipline, raise reliability, finish the modernization, lead incident response and root-cause analysis, and set architecture and Infrastructure-as-Code standards across teams. This is a hands-on individual contributor role working directly with the client's engineering leadership.

Must-Haves

• At least 10 years of experience as a Staff Engineer or senior-level individual contributor supporting high-scale communications or messaging platforms
• Strong background in Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, and distributed systems operations
• Experience leading modernization or migration initiatives for production systems
• Proficiency with observability tools, monitoring frameworks, and incident response practices
• Experience working with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) methodologies and cloud-native technologies
• Strong Python development and operational experience
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, Codex, or similar technologies
• Strong communication, technical leadership, and cross-functional collaboration skills

Nice to have

• Experience supporting C/C++ production systems
• Familiarity with messaging and notification infrastructure, including email or SMS delivery systems
• Experience with AWS-native messaging technologies such as SQS, Lambda, DynamoDB, or KEDA
• Prior experience supporting large-scale modernization or migration initiatives
• Background supporting EdTech, SaaS, or other highly available customer-facing platforms

Key responsibilities

• Lead technical strategy, modernization planning, and operational reliability for the communications platform
• Define and implement scalable architecture, migration, and infrastructure improvement initiatives
• Improve observability through monitoring, alerting, dashboards, SLOs, and incident management practices
• Support production operations across Kubernetes, queue-driven systems, and multi-cloud environments
• Establish architecture review standards and collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams
• Provide technical leadership during incidents, root cause analysis, and operational reviews
• Promote Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and operational best practices across the engineering organization
• Utilize AI-assisted development tools to support codebase navigation and platform evolution