Senior Contract Software Engineer (Data & Platform)

Nimble • Remote / HQ,

9d • Remote

About The Position

Nimble is seeking a senior contractor to work with its engineering team on challenging data and platform problems. The role focuses on high-impact projects with clear outcomes and requires taking ambiguous problems from system design through implementation and delivery, using AI as part of the development process while owning the context and reasoning behind technical decisions.

The contractor will design, build, and operate pipelines that ingest high-volume, messy external data; improve data quality and modeling; help shape architecture for data-intensive products used by school district and state leaders; and build and extend services within Nimble’s service-oriented architecture. The role also contributes to engineering quality through tested, maintainable code, code reviews, and simplifying systems. The engagement is fully remote, ideally 20–30 hours per week with 4–6 hours of overlap with US Central time. It is expected to last 3–6 months, with potential to extend or convert to full-time later.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of experience building production software, with a track record of leading complex projects from design to launch.
• Strong data modeling skills, including designing schemas that can accommodate product and data growth.
• Strong distributed systems fundamentals, including queues, retries, idempotency, concurrency, and failure modes.
• Experience building services in a service-oriented architecture with clear boundaries and well-defined APIs.
• Hands-on experience building and operating modern ETL/ELT pipelines and large-scale third-party integrations, such as web scraping, partner APIs, data feeds, or webhooks.
• Strong programming skills; Nimble uses TypeScript and has a legacy Python monolith.
• Solid SQL skills, preferably with Postgres, including query performance and indexing.
• Experience using AI tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, agents, or custom workflows as a core part of software development while maintaining quality.
• High standards for code quality and pace; ability to write tested, readable code, provide thoughtful reviews, and communicate clearly and proactively.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Cloudflare Workers or other serverless and edge platforms.
• Experience building analytics products or data warehouses.
• Experience with CI/CD and observability tools such as CircleCI, Datadog, or Sentry.
• Experience building LLM-powered features such as extraction, classification, or agentic workflows.
• Background in edtech, government, or the public sector.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate data pipelines that ingest high-volume data from external sources and integrate with third-party platforms.
• Keep data pipelines and integrations reliable.
• Identify data quality problems and build systems that address their root causes.
• Help shape architecture for data-intensive products used by state and district leaders.
• Build and extend services within Nimble’s service-oriented architecture.
• Write well-tested, maintainable code and follow team standards for design, testing, and code quality.
• Review others’ work and communicate clearly and proactively, especially asynchronously.
• Use AI tools as part of the development process while maintaining quality and owning technical decisions.

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed