Senior Software Developer (Python, Data, React, AI)

US News & World Report ,L.P.•Washington, DC

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

U.S. News & World Report is seeking an enthusiastic Full Stack Senior Software Developer with an interest in building dynamic, data-driven products. The role emphasizes an 'AI-first' mindset, utilizing AI tools to maximize efficiency. Developers at U.S. News have significant independence and minimal overhead, leveraging technologies like AI-coding tools, React, Python, Amazon Web Services, Google BigQuery, and data science toolkits to drive transformation. The successful candidate will join a passionate, friendly, and growing team creating web applications that reach millions of visitors monthly. Developers typically manage applications from inception to completion, working directly with product owners on feature creation, implementation, upgrades, optimization, and testing. The Hospital Data Insights (HDI) engineering team within U.S. News Health builds and operates hospital data products, including ingestion pipelines, APIs, and customer-facing applications, under strict launch schedules. This is a senior, backend- and data-heavy role focused on building and maintaining Python services and PostgreSQL-backed data workflows (ETL, validation, reliability), and collaborating with product and methodology stakeholders on data or timeline shifts. While React and modern web standards are relevant for application layer changes, the primary impact is in data correctness, pipeline automation, and production operations. The team actively uses AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, agents) for investigation, implementation, review, and documentation. Collaboration with engineers, analysts, and product owners on the fast-moving Health portfolio is key, as is the ability to calmly handle ambiguous, legacy-heavy problems under pressure.

Requirements

Five or more years of professional software development experience, with meaningful ownership of production backend or data systems (not only ticket execution)
Strong Python experience building and maintaining services, batch jobs or data tooling in production
Significant experience with PostgreSQL or a comparable relational database at scale—writing and optimizing complex queries, managing schema evolution and migrations, and operational troubleshooting
Hands-on ETL or data pipeline ownership—data modeling, batch processing, automation, reliability, and reproducibility
Experience owning APIs or backend services consumed by applications or internal customers
Working knowledge of React or similar SPA frameworks—enough to collaborate on full-stack features when needed
Familiarity with and frequent usage of AI-assisted development tools (e.g. Cursor, Copilot, coding agents) or shipped engineering work involving LLM / AI product features
Comfort with Unix-based environments (macOS or Linux), Git and modern code review practices
A bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field or equivalent practical experience

Nice To Haves

Experience with healthcare or other regulated or sensitive datasets
Familiarity with large-dataset ingestion, transformation, validation, and integration testing at scale and across multiple sources and release cadences
Comfort evolving legacy codebases incrementally (refactoring and hardening vs. rewriting)
Experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g. Jenkins) and AWS (or similar cloud) deployments
Exposure to ML inference, model serving, or tools such as MLflow, OpenMetadata, or Amazon SageMaker
Prior work on high-pressure, date-certain releases dependent on clear communication when requirements or data change late in the development cycle

Responsibilities

Design, build and operate data pipelines and backend services that power hospital insights products
Improve ETL automation, monitoring and data quality as volumes and module complexity grow
Partner with engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders through coordinated releases (including embargo-driven launches)
Employ an AI-first approach to investigation, implementation and code review
Develop and maintain clean, efficient, well-tested code
Make pragmatic architecture decisions, mentor others, and serve as a technical role model responsible for promoting the overall quality of our team and technology beyond your individual contributions
Collaborate closely with product owners and stakeholders on product requirements to streamline and understand new feature work