Python/Django Developer (Senior) (NLM)

Virtual Technologies Group•Bethesda, MD

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

Quotient, Inc. is recruiting a senior Python/Django developer to support the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The developer will work on production Django and PostgreSQL applications, including MeSH, where reliability and performance are critical. The role is embedded in a small team of federal staff and contractors and calls for a self-directed developer who has owned production systems end to end, sets technical approaches, and can advise federal staff and peers. The position requires working on-site in Bethesda, Maryland, three to five days per week, and obtaining a Public Trust background investigation. The developer will take technical ownership of application architecture, performance, and data models; lead production incident triage and root-cause analysis; and design data pipelines, ETL, and integrations with search or document stores when needed. The role also includes application support, PostgreSQL query and migration work, performance and reliability improvements, mentoring, documentation, and support across NLM projects. Front-end work in Angular, Vue, or React may be needed for particular features. Quotient, Inc. provides customized IT solutions, including systems integration, full-stack software development, cybersecurity, project management, and operational support. It serves federal, defense, civilian, and commercial customers and is a subsidiary of Virtual Technologies Group (VTG).

Requirements

Able to work on-site in Bethesda, Maryland, three to five days per week.
Able to obtain a Public Trust background investigation.
At least five years of professional software development experience.
Experience owning a production application end to end, including performance work on large datasets and leading incident response.
Hands-on experience building and maintaining Django applications, including models, views, ORM queries, migrations, and tests.
Comfort writing PostgreSQL SQL, reading query plans, and making schema changes safely.
Solid object-oriented design and knowledge of common design patterns, with the ability to write code that processes complex, nested data structures.
Strong debugging skills, including tracing problems through unfamiliar codebases to their cause.
Fluency with Git branching, rebasing, and squashing in a shared repository.
Good judgment about production changes, including testing, review, and rollback plans.
Ability to work well on a mixed federal and contractor team and explain tradeoffs clearly.

Nice To Haves

Front-end experience with Angular, Vue, or React; TypeScript and JavaScript; Node, Express, and npm.
Experience with functional and event-driven programming, including promises, streaming, or reactive programming.
Experience with search and document stores such as Elasticsearch and MongoDB.
Experience with data pipelines, ETL, and handling varied file formats.
PostgreSQL performance tuning, including indexing, query optimization, and large datasets.
Testing and CI experience, including pytest, coverage, and automated pipelines.
REST API design and maintenance experience.
Linux, shell scripting, Docker, and basic deployment experience.
Experience with AWS or a comparable cloud platform.
Experience with NumPy, Keras, or other data-science libraries.
Familiarity with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), medical terminologies, linked data, controlled vocabularies, or library and biomedical data.
Federal or government work experience, or experience with long-lived production systems.
A public GitHub profile, technical blog, or project portfolio.

Responsibilities

Set and document technical direction for application architecture, performance, and data models, including relevant tradeoffs.
Lead production incident triage and root-cause analysis, and determine release timing and rollback plans.
Design data pipelines, ETL processes, and integrations with search and document stores such as Elasticsearch and MongoDB where needed.
Write runbooks and onboarding documentation, and mentor and bring mid-level hires up to speed.
Fix bugs, deliver enhancements, and handle production issues in NLM Django applications.
Improve performance and reliability by addressing slow queries, inefficient code, fragile areas, tests, and monitoring.
Write and tune PostgreSQL queries, migrations, and data changes safely.
Improve code, tests, and documentation beyond the immediate ticket.
Support other NLM projects and learn new codebases quickly.
Make front-end changes in Angular, Vue, or React when required by a feature.