Tech Lead - Python Engineering

Aera Technology is the Decision Intelligence company. We deliver innovation and services that enable enterprises to operate sustainably, intelligently, and efficiently. Our platform, Aera Decision Cloud™, integrates with your existing systems to digitize, augment, and automate decisions in real time. Aera helps enterprises around the world transform decision making – delivering millions of recommendations that have resulted in significant revenue gains and cost savings for some of the world’s best-known brands.

Privately-held and VC-funded, we have a global team of over 400 Aeranauts – and we’re growing. We deliver Decision Intelligence innovation and services that enable enterprises to automate and scale decision making with accuracy and speed. We continue to be the trusted choice of market leaders for our proven ability to generate value and unlock opportunities that were previously unattainable.

We are looking for a backend engineering leader (8–11 years) with expertise in Python-based microservices (FastAPI, Flask, Django), Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, and GitOps (ArgoCD). The ideal candidate has a strong track record in architecting scalable, cloud-native, distributed systems with resilient service-to-service communication (REST, gRPC, Kafka, RabbitMQ), service meshes, and API gateways. They bring deep knowledge of databases (SQL/NoSQL), caching, and observability (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, ELK/EFK), along with proven leadership, mentoring, and delivery of secure, highly available systems. Bonus: Java/Go experience.

Responsibilities :
• Technical Leadership: Lead and mentor backend engineers, ensuring best practices in distributed system design, coding, testing, and DevOps.
• Architecture & Design: Own the end-to-end design of scalable, secure, and self-healing distributed systems and APIs.
• Cloud-Native Engineering: Build and operate containerized applications using Python, Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, with GitOps-driven workflows via ArgoCD.
• Distributed Communication: Architect systems with robust service-to-service communication using REST, gRPC, pub/sub, and event-driven messaging (Kafka, RabbitMQ), integrated with service meshes (Istio/Linkerd).
• Scalability & Reliability: Design horizontally scalable, resilient, and fault-tolerant systems with automated recovery, health probes, and graceful degradation.
• Traffic Management & Rate Limiting: Implement API gateways, rate limiting, quotas, and load balancing to protect services and enforce SLAs.
• CI/CD & DevOps: Define and optimize CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Argo Workflows) with safe deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, rollbacks).
• Database Design & Performance: Design and optimize relational and NoSQL databases, handle sharding/replication, and improve performance with caching (Redis, Memcached).
• Observability: Implement monitoring, logging, and tracing (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, ELK/EFK) for end-to-end visibility.
• Code Quality & Reviews: Set engineering standards, conduct code/design reviews, and ensure delivery of modular, maintainable, production-ready code.
• Collaboration: Work cross-functionally with product managers, DevOps/SRE, and architects to align business needs with technical solutions.
• Problem Solving: Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks, scaling issues, and complex failures in distributed systems.
• Innovation: Research emerging backend, cloud-native, and distributed systems technologies; drive adoption of impactful solutions.
• Delivery Ownership: Own technical delivery, availability, and scalability outcomes.
• Knowledge Sharing: Promote design discussions, documentation, and continuous learning within the team.

About You:
• Education: B.E./B.Tech in Computer Science/Engineering or equivalent experience.
• Experience: 8–11 years in backend engineering, with expertise in Python and distributed systems.
• Python Expertise: Strong background in building robust APIs and microservices with frameworks like FastAPI, Flask, or Django.
• Distributed Systems: Experience designing and operating distributed services, using service meshes, API gateways, and event-driven messaging (Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Traffic Management: Hands-on experience implementing rate limiting, throttling, quotas, and load balancing.
• Kubernetes & Containers: Deep understanding of Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, and GitOps with ArgoCD.
• Scalability & Self-Healing: Proven ability to design systems that auto-scale, auto-recover, and degrade gracefully.
• Database Systems: Skilled in schema design, query optimization, replication, partitioning, and database performance tuning.
• System Design: Strong knowledge of distributed architecture patterns (leader election, consensus, CQRS, event sourcing).
• DevOps & CI/CD: Experience with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Argo, and observability stacks.
• Collaboration & Leadership: Strong communicator with experience leading teams, mentoring engineers, and partnering with product/DevOps.
• Bonus: Knowledge of Java or Go is an added advantage, especially for working across polyglot distributed systems.
• Mindset: Ownership-driven, proactive, and passionate about building scalable, resilient, and fair-use systems.

If you share our passion for building a sustainable, intelligent, and efficient world, you’re in the right place. Established in 2017 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, we're a series D start-up, with teams in Mountain View, San Francisco (California), Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca (Romania), Paris (France), Munich (Germany), London (UK), Pune (India), and Sydney (Australia). So join us, and let’s build this!

Aera Technology is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

Benefits Summary
At Aera Technology, we strive to support our Aeranauts and their loved ones through different stages of life with a variety of attractive benefits, and great perks. In addition to offering a competitive salary and company stock options, we have other great benefits available. You’ll find comprehensive medical, Group Medical Insurance, Term Insurance, Accidental Insurance, paid time off, Maternity leave, and much more. We offer unlimited access to online professional courses for both professional and personal development, coupled with people manager development programs. We believe in a flexible working environment, to allow our Aeranauts to perform at their best, ensuring a healthy work-life balance. When you’re working from the office, you’ll also have access to a fully-stocked kitchen with a selection of snacks and beverages.