Staff Engineer Python

Together with our Business Partner, a fast-growing, VC-backed conversational AI company building real-time voice AI for one of the world's largest consumer industries, we are looking for an experienced specialist to deliver projects as a Staff Backend Engineer. The Partner's platform already runs live across hundreds of locations for well-known international brands, holding natural spoken conversations and completing transactions end-to-end in demanding acoustic conditions where generic voice assistants fall short.

• 10+ years of experience in Python development.
• Previous experience as a Staff or Principal Engineer at a startup company.
• Previous leadership experience, including leading teams and driving large, ambiguously defined projects from concept through delivery.
• Strong Python Asyncio experience.
• Strong software design skills.
• Deep understanding of networking protocols and operating systems.
• Deep knowledge of Python profiling.
• Experience delivering and troubleshooting a production-grade cloud-based distributed system.
• Experience with Kubernetes and Helm.
• Experience with different observability stacks.
• Strong LLM prompting skills, while also being comfortable working without them.
• Experience with gRPC and its troubleshooting.
• BSc in Software Development or equivalent industry experience.
• Resilience to balance planned work with real-time issues in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including producing crisp and clear documentation.
• Strong ownership and independence with ability to lead projects with minimal guidance.
• Ability to translate incomplete requirements into an actual product.

Nice to have:

• Previous experience owning technical responsibilities related to SOC 2 compliance.
• Understanding of one or more of: WebRTC, STUN/TURN, SIP, RTP, HLS, RTMP.
• Experience with a strongly typed language (Rust, C++, Go, Swift, Java, etc.).
• Experience building and troubleshooting a real-time low-level system (e.g. kernel, drivers, RTOS).
• Audio programming experience.
• Being a contributor or maintainer of an open-source package.

• Owning parts of the core backend infrastructure, a complex real-time distributed system written in Python and Rust.
• Owning large, complex initiatives end-to-end, including projects with incomplete or evolving requirements, delivered with minimal guidance.
• Driving down the incident rate across the platform.
• Resolving stability issues and highly complex production problems.
• Owning the technical responsibilities related to the SOC 2 process, including managing the person responsible for its day-to-day execution.
• Continuously improving development velocity while maintaining a very high reliability standard.