Lead Backend Software Engineer

SITE Technologies • Chicago, IL

5d • $70,000 - $90,000 • Remote

About The Position

SITE Technologies is seeking a hands-on Lead Backend Software Engineer to lead and grow a small backend team while personally building and evolving SITE's platform and related customer systems. This is a player-coach role: the Lead will directly manage 3 to 4 senior backend engineers, set technical direction, remain deeply involved in the architecture, implementation, quality, and operation of critical backend systems, and oversee nearshore engineers or consultants as the team evolves. The ideal candidate is a pragmatic, product-minded engineer and thoughtful people manager who can turn complex operational workflows and user needs into clear technical plans, reliable data models, stable API contracts, and delivered product outcomes. This person will partner closely with product managers, other technical teams, and business stakeholders to ship backend systems for geospatial data, imagery, asset workflows, reporting, third-party integrations, and AI product experiences.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in backend development, with strong proficiency in Python
• Demonstrated experience as a hands-on technical lead while directly managing engineers
• Very strong ability to reason from first principles about backend architecture, workflow modeling, API boundaries, data consistency, security, and operational failure modes
• Strong product judgment and ability to turn ambiguous business needs into clear technical plans and deliverable milestones
• Proven ability to mentor senior engineers, give direct feedback, and raise team performance
• Strong communication skills and ability to lead across product, frontend, data, operations, and business teams
• Experience building production APIs with FastAPI or similar Python frameworks
• Strong understanding of relational data modeling, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy or comparable ORM libraries, and database migration tools such as Alembic or Flyway
• Experience with AWS backend services such as ECS, Lambda, RDS, S3, IAM, and related services
• Experience with Docker, Git, and designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, or similar tools
• Practical fluency with AI coding agents such as Claude Code and Cursor

Nice To Haves

• Experience working in a dynamic startup environment
• Experience managing distributed teams or external engineering partners
• Knowledge of infrastructure as code, preferably Terraform and Terragrunt
• Experience with observability tools such as Datadog and Sentry
• Experience designing authentication and authorization flows
• Experience with 2D and 3D geospatial data
• Experience with ETL pipeline development, data migration, or large-scale unstructured data processing
• Experience building agentic systems with tools such as LangGraph, Claude Code SDK, and Amazon Bedrock
• Experience modernizing legacy systems while preserving production behavior

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical design and hands-on implementation of core backend APIs and services, primarily in Python and FastAPI
• Set architectural direction for domain models, relational schemas, service boundaries, data consistency, and API contracts
• Translate product priorities into well-scoped delivery plans, milestones, and technical decisions
• Personally lead critical-path development, code reviews, release planning, and incident response
• Set and maintain high standards for testing, CI/CD, observability, security, performance, and production reliability
• Build reliable integrations across geospatial, media, reporting, asset management, and third-party vendor systems
• Develop and maintain ETL and data migration processes for imagery, geospatial, and operational data
• Directly manage 3 to 4 senior backend engineers through regular one-on-ones, feedback, performance management, and career development, while overseeing nearshore engineers or consultants as needed
• Delegate work effectively, remove delivery blockers, and ensure the team ships high-quality backend systems predictably
• Partner with product, frontend, data, operations, and QA teams to prioritize tradeoffs and deliver customer value
• Hire, onboard, mentor, and develop strong backend engineers

Benefits

• Competitive base salary of $70,000 to $90,000 per year
• Opportunity to participate in SITE’s stock options plan
• Generous paid vacation
• Separate sick time banks
• Ten (10) Company holidays off plus two (2) floating holidays
• Two (2) paid days per year to do volunteer work
• Paid parental leave benefits available after ninety (90) days of employment
• Employee health, dental, vision, life and short-term disability coverage at no cost
• 401K plan with a 4% employer safe harbor contribution

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed