Job Description
Senior Python Developer
Watford, Hertfordshire (Hybrid)
£70,000 - £75,000 per annum + Excellent benefits
On behalf of an industry Leading organisation, I am seeking a Senior Python Developer with strong production experience building high-throughput, message-driven platforms. This role suits someone comfortable working on real-world, always-on systems where reliability, performance, and clear engineering judgement matter as much as clean code.
The business is pleased to offer this role on a hybrid basis with a non-negotiable 3 days in office; therefore, you must be within easy reach of their Watford-based offices.
Responsibilities:
* Collaborate closely with Principal Engineers.
* Provide technical guidance, insight, and mentorship to other engineers.
* Participate in peer reviews and offer constructive feedback.
* Support product stakeholders in shaping the roadmap.
* Contribute to best practices and engineering standards across the wider engineering organization.
* Participate in modern software development practices including pairing, code reviews, documentation reviews, testing, and continuous delivery.
* Translate requirements into implementable technical specifications and tasks.
* Maintain accurate and reliable technical documentation.
* Provide regular updates on progress, timelines, risks, and dependencies.
* Lead troubleshooting and incident resolution, including occasional out-of-hours support.
* Ensure unit tests are implemented and fit for purpose.
* Research and evaluate new technologies that could benefit the organisation.
* Design and develop high-quality Python software that meets complex business needs.
* Ensure code, documentation, and testing align with engineering standards.
* Deliver solutions that meet acceptance criteria, performance expectations, and operational reliability.
* Integrate products with monitoring and support tooling.
Experience/Skills required:
* Experienced Senior Engineer who can make sound trade-offs, design for scale, and contribute to complex systems without over-engineering.
* Strong engineering judgement and real-world delivery experience.
* Senior-level experience designing and building production Back End services in Python (3.10+).
* Strong background in high-throughput, message-based or event-driven systems.
* Proven experience building API-first services, with a focus on performance, reliability, and maintainability.
* Python Back End development, primarily using FastAPI and modern API patterns.
* Strong understanding of RESTful API design, schema validation, and OpenAPI/Swagger.
* Experience working with messaging and eventing platforms such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, MQTT, or similar.
* Cloud-native development experience is essential (ideally on Azure).
* Hands-on experience with containerisation (Docker) and orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes.
* Exposure to building and supporting shared or internal libraries used across multiple services.