Senior Python Engineer

Senior Python Backend Engineer – Web Scraping Project 6-month contract | £500 per day | London | Hybrid working A specialist sports modelling and trading technology business is looking for a Senior Python Backend Engineer to join its platform team on an initial six-month contract. The role will focus on a business-critical web scraping project designed to expand and improve access to external liquidity providers and real-time market data. You’ll build reliable, low-latency services that collect, process and distribute data from external platforms, including systems that may not provide stable or conventional APIs. This is a strong opportunity for an experienced backend engineer who enjoys technically challenging work involving web scraping, reverse engineering, real-time data, imperfect third-party integrations and production systems where speed, correctness and reliability all matter. You’ll work within a small, highly capable engineering team and take ownership of services with a direct commercial impact. What you’ll be doing • Building and maintaining high-performance web scraping and data collection services using Python and asyncio • Reverse engineering websites, network requests and third-party platforms to identify reliable methods of accessing real-time data • Developing low-latency data feeds that integrate with internal trading systems • Designing resilient services that can respond to changes in external websites and data sources • Managing challenges such as session handling, authentication, rate limits, retries, timeouts and changing page structures • Creating stable internal interfaces that shield the wider trading platform from unreliable external systems • Working with distributed systems, event-driven architecture and high-throughput messaging • Improving observability using structured logging, latency metrics, distributed tracing, dashboards, heartbeats and alerting • Contributing to architectural decisions and the technical direction of the project • Supporting engineering quality through code reviews, documentation and knowledge sharing What we’re looking for • Strong backend engineering experience using Python • Commercial experience building web scraping, data extraction or automated data collection systems • Experience working with asynchronous Python, ideally using asyncio • An understanding of browser behaviour, HTTP, APIs, authentication, cookies, sessions and network requests • Experience reverse engineering websites or undocumented third-party integrations • Knowledge of distributed systems, messaging platforms or event-driven architecture • A thoughtful approach to reliability, resilience and operational behaviour • Strong judgement around architecture, maintainability and pragmatic delivery • Confidence working with business-critical production systems • Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail Experience with trading systems, real-time data feeds, low-latency services, browser automation or rapidly changing third-party platforms would be particularly relevant. Technology environment The wider technology environment includes: Python, asyncio, Kafka, RabbitMQ, Redis, PostgreSQL, LXD Containers, Ansible and OpenTelemetry, alongside modern AI engineering tools such as Claude Code, Cursor and Codex. Contract details • Initial six-month contract • £500 per day Outside IR35 • London-based hybrid working For a Senior Python Backend Engineer who wants to work at the sharp end of real-time trading technology, this is an opportunity to deliver a technically complex web scraping project where performance, reliability and correctness genuinely matter. Apply now or get in touch for a confidential conversation.