Senior Backend Engineer

Arete Capital Partners

18d•Remote

About The Position

As an early member of Areté’s newly formed Data & AI team, you will work closely with the Team Lead to build the function from the ground up and scale our client project delivery. Our Data and AI strategy has three pillars: People (internal transformation), Projects (client solution delivery), and Product (SaaS development). You'll primarily focus on the Projects pillar—leading client engagements that solve real business problems through data science and AI—while contributing to our product roadmap by abstracting reusable components from client work. You'll work on high-impact projects across the portfolio of Areté clients. Some projects include SKU rationalization, inventory optimization for retail and CPG clients, and price optimization for entertainment industry leaders. This remote-first role offers significant autonomy, direct client interaction, and the chance to shape both our technical direction and team culture as we grow.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Economics, Data Science, or related field
5+ years of professional experience with Python in production environments
Proven track record of deploying AI/ML models to production and solving real business problems
Strong proficiency with the PyData stack: pandas/polars, scikit-learn, matplotlib
Solid SQL skills for data querying and manipulation
Experience with agentic AI frameworks (Pydantic AI preferred, or similar)
Proficiency with Jupyter or Marimo notebooks for exploratory analysis and prototyping
Strong GitHub skills and collaborative development practices
Client-facing experience is non-negotiable – you must be comfortable presenting to and advising clients
Practical, hands-on experience (not just academic or theoretical background)
Willingness to travel

Nice To Haves

Consulting or professional services background
Startup experience (ideally a mix of both consulting and startup environments)
Frontend or full-stack development skills for added versatility
Experience with dbt for data transformation workflows
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Experience in retail, CPG, or entertainment/events industries
Knowledge of additional ML frameworks (LangChain, TensorFlow, PyTorch)

Responsibilities

Lead client projects from discovery through production deployment, owning the full technical lifecycle
Interface directly with clients to understand business challenges and translate them into technical solutions
Work directly with Areté’s consultants to bring technology to automate and optimize their process and work together to deliver client outcomes
Design and build production-ready data science and AI solutions using Python, modern ML frameworks, and agentic AI (Pydantic AI)
Travel to client sites (up to 40%) for onboarding, discovery workshops, and strategic engagements
Ensure solutions deliver measurable business value and meet success criteria established during discovery
Abstract reusable components and patterns from client work into our SaaS product platform
Build and maintain scalable, modular codebases that can be deployed across multiple clients
Develop data pipelines, ML models, and AI agents that become core product features
Establish technical standards, best practices, and documentation for the growing team
Contribute to architecture decisions and technical strategy for the Data & AI business unit
Work closely with the Data Team Lead in a highly collaborative, remote-first environment
Eventually mentor and manage junior engineers as the team scales
Participate in technical decision-making and help shape the team's culture and processes
Contribute to internal knowledge sharing and technical documentation