Senior Backend Developer (API Design & Development) for NATO

Would you like to join the leading international intergovernmental organization

We are seeking a Senior Python Backend Developer to design build and operate scalable services and data pipelines that power maritime geospatial and temporal analytics across the platform. You will develop production-grade APIs and microservices integrate with Neo4j for graph-centric use cases and leverage Databricks for data engineering and ML workflows.

You will collaborate closely with architecture data engineering and product to translate domain models into clean testable code using Domain-Driven Design. Expect to define clear bounded contexts align contracts and schemas and ensure services reflect the ubiquitous language of the domain.

This is a hands-on engineering role with strong ownership. You will lead features end-to-endfrom technical discovery and design through implementation testing deployment and runtime monitoringprioritizing reliability performance and security. You will participate in code reviews mentor peers contribute to architectural decisions and proactively surface technical risks and trade-offs. Clear timely communication on progress and blockers is essential.

Essential Qualifications & Experience:

Back-End Development & Programming

• Python: Advanced proficiency; clean idiomatic code; familiarity with the ecosystem (virtual environments packaging type hints async/await)

• Frameworks: Production experience with FastAPI famwork and async best practices

• OOP & design patterns: Solid object-oriented design skills; familiarity with common design patterns (factory strategy repository dependency injection)

• Domain-Driven Design (DDD): Strong practical experience applying DDD principles including bounded contexts aggregates repositories domain services ubiquitous language and event-driven domain modelling

• Performance: Profiling caching strategies connection pooling async processing background task queues (Celery Dramatiq or equivalent)

API Design & Development

• RESTful APIs: Resource modelling versioning error handling pagination OpenAPI / Swagger documentation

• Data formats: JSON JSON Schema validation; familiarity with serialisation libraries (Pydantic Marshmallow)

• Event-driven systems: Message brokers (Kafka MQTT Azure Event Hubs etc.) pub/sub patterns async task processing

Databases & Data Persistence

• Relational databases: Strong SQL skills; experience with PostgreSQL and/or SQL Server; schema design indexing query optimisation migrations

• Graph databases: Strong hands-on experience designing and working with Neo4j graph databases including Cypher query optimisation and graph data modelling

• Geospatial & temporal data: Strong experience modelling processing querying and extending geospatial and temporal datasets and services; familiarity with spatial indexing time-series data and geospatial standards/tools

Containerisation & Linux

• Docker: Writing Dockerfiles (multi-stage builds) Docker Compose for local development image optimisation

• Kubernetes: Basic understanding of K8s concepts (pods services deployments ConfigMaps) for deploying and debugging applications

• Linux: Comfortable with the command line; shell scripting process management file permissions networking basics

Software Engineering Practices

• Testing: TDD unit testing (pytest) integration testing mocking code coverage; awareness of contract testing

• CI/CD: Building and maintaining pipelines (GitHub Actions GitLab CI Azure DevOps or equivalent); automated linting testing and deployment

• Version control: Advanced Git usage branching strategies (GitFlow trunk-based) pull/merge requests rebasing conflict resolution

• Code quality: Static analysis linting (Ruff flake8 mypy) code review best practices documentation (docstrings ADRs)

Security

• Secure coding: OWASP Top 10 awareness input validation output encoding secrets management

• Authentication & authorisation: OAuth 2.0 OpenID Connect JWT; experience integrating with identity providers (Keycloak Entra ID or equivalent)

• API security: Rate limiting CORS TLS API key management

Architecture Awareness & Collaboration

• Architecture literacy: Ability to read and contribute to architectural documentation (C4 UML); understanding of microservices event-driven and layered patterns

• Agile: Active participation in sprint ceremonies backlog refinement estimation and retrospectives

• Communication: Clear reporting of progress and blockers; collaboration with architects front-end developers QA DevOps and UX designers

• English proficiency: Excellent written and spoken English in a professional/international context

If youve read the description and feel this role is a great match wed love to hear from you! Click Apply for this job to be directed to a brief questionnaire. It should only take a few moments to complete and well be in touch promptly if your experience aligns with our needs.