Senior Python Engineer & Tech Lead

Your mission

We at SIDES are looking for a Senior Python Engineer & Tech Lead (m/w/d) to take ownership of our Python Backend ecosystem and shape the future of our technology stack. This is a unique opportunity to build and lead a growing team while staying hands-on with architecture and code.

You will be the technical anchor for our Python backend, responsible for:

• Owning the Python backend ecosystem - Drive architectural decisions for a monorepo with independent REST services
• Leading critical technical initiatives - Plan, estimate, and deliver complex projects that span multiple teams and domains
• Building a high-performing team - Start with 1 medior engineer and grow to 6 team members through hiring and cross-training
• Maintaining engineering excellence - Protect and enhance our established quality standards while scaling
  
  This role starts at 70% hands-on technical work and evolves toward more leadership responsibilities as the team grows. You'll write production code, drive architectural decisions, and mentor engineers while coordinating with Product, Dev Ops, PHP, and other tech teams.

Core Responsibilities:

1. Technical Leadership (Initial Focus):

• Design, develop, and maintain backend services and APIs using Python, FastAPI, and SQL Alchemy
• Drive architectural decisions for the Python backend ecosystem and evaluate technical trade-offs
• Lead and track large-scale technical initiatives including migrations, integrations, and platform improvements
• Coordinate releases and deployments for Python services
• Ensure application performance, scalability, quality, and stability
• Participate in cross-stack architectural discussions (Python, PHP, GO, Flutter)
• Implement security and data protection measures
• Write clean, maintainable, well-documented code

2. Team Leadership (Growing Responsibility):

• Mentor and coach team members through regular 1:1s, feedback sessions, and pair programming
• Guide technical decision-making and provide constructive code reviews
• Shield the team from ad-hoc interruptions and advocate for clear requirements
• Facilitate agile ceremonies (sprints, standups, retrospectives) as the team scales
• Collaborate with Product Management to refine requirements and estimate initiatives
• Foster knowledge sharing and documentation practices

3. Cross-Team

Collaboration:

• Coordinate with Dev Ops, PHP, Frontend, and other engineering teams
• Bridge communication between technical teams and product stakeholders
• Drive alignment on technical standards and best practices across teams

Required Qualifications:

- Technical Expertise:

• 7+ years of Python backend development in business/enterprise environments
• Strong expertise with FastAPI, SQL Alchemy, and ORM patterns
• Deep knowledge of databases (Postgre
  
  SQL, MySQL, Redis, Dynamo
  
  DB)
• Proven experience with RESTful APIs and web services
• Understanding of asynchronous programming and event-driven architectures
• Proficiency with Docker, Git, CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation
• Familiarity with AWS cloud services and cloud-native development

- Leadership & Project Management:

• Proven ability to lead technical projects from estimation through delivery
• Experience mentoring and coaching other engineers
• Strong documentation and communication skills
• Ability to track and coordinate initiatives involving multiple teams
• Comfortable estimating and planning large-scale technical work

- Collaboration & Communication:

• Excellent problem-solving skills and analytical thinking
• Ability to push back constructively on unclear requirements
• Strong stakeholder management and cross-team coordination
• Team player with a collaborative mindset

- Preferred Skills (Nice-to-Have):

• Kubernetes (K8s) experience and container orchestration
• Event-driven systems and message queue experience (Rabbit
  
  MQ, Kafka, etc.)
• PHP knowledge (helpful for understanding legacy systems and migrations)
• German language skills (our team is multilingual, but German is a plus)
• Product thinking mindset - ability to balance technical excellence with business value
• AWS services experience (ECS, Lambda, RDS, Elasti Cache, etc.)
• Microservices architecture patterns
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools (Grafana, Cloud Watch, etc.)