Staff Python Engineer

Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Right Balance provides top-tier technology talent for innovative companies in the US. We’re in the top 50 companies to watch in LA. Client Engagement Details Our client is one of the top-rated marketing automation platforms built for small and mid-sized ecommerce brands in the U.S. They're the #1 reviewed app on the Shopify App Store and have helped over 17,000 merchants generate $7B+ in sales. Now offering a unified platform, they allow merchants to manage email campaigns, SMS automation, onsite popups, and soon—real-time 1:1 conversations—all in one place. By eliminating the friction of disconnected tools, they help brands build smarter, more profitable customer relationships. Their mission is simple: to help ecommerce entrepreneurs succeed through easy, effective, and delightful marketing software. They're seeking a hands-on Staff Engineer to provide technical leadership for our Django-based SMS marketing platform. This is a critical role focused on maintaining stability while evolving a high-volume system. This position will build trust as a technical expert while helping the team make great decisions to improve and scale messaging infrastructure. Key Responsibilities • Lead technical initiatives to improve system reliability, performance, and scalability for our high-volume SMS platform • Maintain and simplify distributed system for segmenting and delivering SMS messages at high volume • Create technical documentation, runbooks, and development tooling to reduce knowledge siloing and improve developer experience • Provide architectural and system design direction for new capabilities and scaling existing capabilities • Support engineers through hands-on technical mentorship while remaining actively involved in code development • Participate in on-call rotation and contribute to or lead incident response as necessary • Collaborate with Ruby/Rails engineering team leaders to establish engineering strategy Availability: Full-time. Location: United States of America What’s in it for you? 1. Learn and evolve your skills using the latest and greatest technology tools in a rapidly growing company. 1. Learn from the best people around you. We constantly challenge the status quo and invent new ways of building a great product. 1. 100% remote. Work anywhere, whether it is remotely in the comfort of your home, in a shared co-working space, in an RV on the beach, or while being a nomad in another country. 1. Work on challenging problems, innovate, and positively impact many people's lives while having fun doing it. Required Qualifications • Upper-intermediate to fluent speaking and writing English. Able to have a real-time conversation. • 10+ years of full-time hands-on total development experience. • 3+ years of full-time hands-on Backend API Python (Django) experience. • Deep experience with message queuing systems (Celery, RabbitMQ, Kafka, SNS, etc.), distributed systems, and both monolithic and service oriented architectures • Proven track record of improving legacy codebases and experience working with legacy Django systems - experience upgrading legacy Django systems is a plus • Strong systems design skills with experience building horizontally scalable architectures • Experience with SMS/telephony or email delivery systems - Twilio is a plus • Strong written communication skills and established habits communicating asynchronously and teaching through technical documentation • Have been in a Senior+ hands-on coding role in the last 2 years Nice to Haves • Experience writing React to prototype or implement new functionality • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent demonstrated ability. Frequently Asked Questions What are your typical clients? The majority of our clients are venture-backed startups at the growth stage. Usually, at this stage, the company already achieved a product-market fit and is looking to expand rapidly. That’s where we bring the best engineering practices, strong architecture, the latest technologies, and consistent processes to help companies scale. What is the length of your engagements? Most of our long-term full-time engagements last multiple years. It allows you to evolve your career with the client company taking on more responsibilities. What’s your company size? The Right Balance team is 55+ engineers going to 75+ by the end of the year. The current client size team is 43+ people. The timing is great to be a part of a rapidly growing team making meaningful contributions. What happens if the engagement is completed? Most of our engagements are long-term in nature. That said, if the current engagement is ramping down, we’ll present you with more long-term opportunities to transition into. What are your core values? • Client First: we only win when our clients win. We treat client challenges as our own. • Ownership: we embrace responsibility, taking on challenges, getting them to completion, and enjoying getting things done. Quality: we’re passionate about achieving quality outcomes by applying meticulous attention to detail.