Senior Backend Software Engineer

The Washington Post•Washington, DC

20h•$119,700 - $199,300•Onsite

About The Position

The Washington Post is seeking a Senior Software Engineer with expertise in personalization, and scalable full-stack solutions to join our Platform Engineering organization. This role is critical in driving growth through the development of AI and personalization features facing end users. As a senior engineer, you will collaborate with cross-functional teams to build and own the platform on top of which AI/ML models are delivered and maintain critical data pipelines that feed product and ML decision-making.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field.
7+ years of experience in software development, with a focus on full-stack solutions.
1+ years of experience working with AI or personalization-focused features.
Strong experience with full-stack development using Python and Node.js.
Proficiency with relational databases such as Postgres and MySQL, including query optimization.
Hands-on expertise with AWS services such as EC2, Lambda, S3, ECS, and RDS.
Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as AWS CloudFormation or Terraform.
Experience with DevOps technologies such as Docker, Jenkins, and CI/CD pipelines.
Practical experience with monitoring and observability tools like Datadog, Splunk, or CloudWatch.
Familiarity with NoSQL solutions like MongoDB or DocumentDB.
Experience writing unit and integration tests to ensure code quality.
Excellent communication, documentation, and presentation skills for technical and business audiences.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain full-stack web applications using Python and AWS services.
Develop and optimize database schemas and queries, primarily using Postgres, to support high-performance data processing.
Partner with data scientists to integrate and deploy AI models and recommendation systems into production.
Build and maintain critical data pipelines that feed product and ML decision-making.
Manage and optimize AWS infrastructure, driving cloud cost mastery and reducing overall spend.
Participate in technical planning and ownership of end-to-end development efforts from idea to production.
Provide technical guidance and mentorship to other engineers through code reviews and knowledge sharing.
Regularly identify technical debt and areas of opportunity in the codebase, organizing team efforts to resolve them.
Work closely with product managers, designers, and stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
Establish and foster engineering standards for code quality, unit testing, and continuous integration across all systems.
Execute on ambiguous spikes to deliver clear technical recommendations and proof of concepts.