Senior II Backend Engineer

About Ethyca is redefining trust in the age of AI. We build automated data privacy infrastructure that embeds governance directly into data, ensuring policy, consent, and control live wherever data moves. Our clients include The New York Times and the world's most advanced organizations scaling AI responsibly. We're on a mission to make trust, respect, and privacy a default feature of every tech stack.

The Role

As a Senior II Backend Engineer at Ethyca, you will be a technical leader and force multiplier on the engineering team. You'll architect and build the core systems that power Fides enabling enterprises to manage data governance, consent, and privacy rights at massive scale. This role demands deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and the ability to mentor others while shipping high-impact features that directly affect how the world's largest organizations deploy AI responsibly.

• Technical Leadership & Architecture
• Lead the design and implementation of major system components, from DSR orchestration to API integrations to high-performance data processing pipelines
• Make critical decisions about system design, data models, and technology choices that will scale to support Fortune 500 customers processing billions of privacy requests
• Identify architectural risks and scaling bottlenecks before they become issues; propose solutions that keep us ahead of customer needs
• Champion best practices in code quality, testing, observability, and documentation; raise the bar for the entire team
• Build & Ship High-Impact Features
• Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code that serves millions of users and meets enterprise-grade reliability standards
• Take projects from concept through design, implementation, testing, deployment, and iteration; driving outcomes, not just completing tasks
• Balance speed and excellence; ship rapidly while maintaining high standards for code quality, testing, and documentation
• Leverage AI-assisted tools to accelerate development, improve code quality, and enhance productivity across the development lifecycle
• Collaboration & Mentorship
• Provide technical guidance, code reviews, and architectural mentorship to help other engineers level up their skills
• Lead project planning sessions, write detailed technical specifications, and ensure alignment across engineering, product, and design
• Support the open source community through thoughtful PR reviews, issue triage, and helping users troubleshoot complex problems
• Work closely with Product, Design, and Customer Success to ensure technical solutions align with business goals and customer needs
• Operational Excellence
• Design systems that handle enterprise workloads with demanding SLAs, security requirements, and compliance needs
• Use metrics, monitoring, and data analysis to inform architectural choices and operational improvements
• Take ownership of production systems; respond to incidents quickly and drive post-mortems that prevent future issues
• Identify inefficiencies in development workflows, tooling, and processes; propose and implement solutions

• Technical Expertise
• 8+ years building production-grade web applications, distributed systems, or backend services with proven track record of delivering complex technical projects
• Expert-level proficiency with Python 3 and web frameworks (Django, Flask, FastAPI); deep understanding of async programming, performance optimization, and Python ecosystem best practices
• Strong experience designing RESTful APIs, third-party integrations, and building systems that other developers love to use
• Proficient with relational (Postgre
  
  SQL, MySQL) and/or No
  
  SQL databases (Mongo
  
  DB, Redis); experience with data warehouses (Snowflake, Big Query) is a plus
• Passionate about automated testing (unit, integration, E2E); experienced with CI/CD pipelines (Git Hub Actions, Git Lab CI) and maintaining high test coverage
• Comfortable with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization (Docker), and infrastructure-as-code
• Enterprise Scale Experience
• Built and operated systems handling millions of requests per day with stringent performance and reliability requirements
• Understanding of enterprise security practices, data encryption, and compliance requirements (GDPR, CCPA, SOC
  2)
• Experience designing systems that serve multiple large enterprise customers with data isolation and tenant-specific configurations
• Technical Leadership
• Proven ability to design systems for scale, maintainability, and evolution; make sound technical tradeoffs between complexity, time, and quality
• Tackle ambiguous, complex problems with innovative solutions; comfortable diving deep into unfamiliar codebases or technologies
• Track record of helping other engineers grow through code reviews, pairing, documentation, and technical guidance
• Drive initiatives from concept to completion without waiting to be told what to do; comfortable with autonomy and accountability
• Collaboration & Communication
• Strong technical writing skills; produce clear documentation,…