Required Skills & Experience
- 8+ years preferred of professional backend software development experience, with deep hands-on expertise developing production applications in Python.
- Strong hands-on experience with FastAPI and/or Flask, including Python async patterns, dependency injection, Pydantic validation, and production-grade backend development.
- Demonstrated technical leadership of a development team, including owning technical decisions, conducting code reviews, mentoring engineers, breaking down work, and removing technical blockers. This is one of the two most important requirements for the position.
- Strong REST API design and microservices experience, including OpenAPI/contract-first development, API versioning, authentication, error handling, and service-to-service integrations.
- Experience with modern CI/CD and containerized environments, particularly GitLab CI/CD, Docker, Kubernetes/OpenShift/RKE2, Linux, and deployment pipelines.
- Strong relational database experience, particularly PostgreSQL, including schema design, query optimization, migrations, and backend application integration.
- Experience leading, mentoring, or coordinating distributed/offshore engineering teams, with strong written documentation and the ability to lead through technical influence rather than direct management authority.
Nice to Have Skills & Experience
- 3+ years coordinating distributed/offshore teams is preferred.
This role is REMOTE, but may require someone to relocate to Austin, TX if they want to accept a FTE role with the end client.
Compensation: $40/hr to $50/hr **Exact compensation may vary based on several factors, including skills, experience, and education.
Employees in this role will enjoy a comprehensive benefits package starting on day one of employment, including options for medical, dental, and vision insurance. Eligibility to enroll in the 401(k) retirement plan begins after 90 days of employment. Additionally, employees in this role will have access to paid sick leave and other paid time off benefits as required under the applicable law of the worksite location.
Job Description
A customer of Insight Global is looking to hire a Lead Python Developer / Software Engineering Technical Lead to come onboard! This individual will serve as the technical bridge between a Forward Deployed Engineer and an offshore development team, translating architectural direction and product requirements into executable technical work. The position is roughly 50% hands-on development and 50% technical leadership, with responsibility for Python backend development, API design, code reviews, technical decision-making, delivery coordination, and mentoring distributed engineers. The ideal candidate will be a strong communicator who can lead through technical influence rather than formal management authority while supporting a geographically distributed engineering team. If you believe you are the right fit for the role, we welcome you to apply!
Day-to-day:
- Spend approximately 50% of the role hands-on in the codebase, primarily contributing to Python backend services using FastAPI/Flask, async patterns, Pydantic, and REST APIs.
- Translate architecture and product requirements from the FDE into detailed technical specifications, user stories, acceptance criteria, and actionable development work for offshore engineers.
- Serve as the technical escalation point for offshore developers, removing blockers and making day-to-day decisions around implementation, internal design, refactoring, and production support.
- Perform code reviews and enforce engineering standards across testing, documentation, contract-first OpenAPI design, CI/CD pipelines, branching strategy, and production readiness.
- Lead technical planning and break larger initiatives into realistic deliverables, providing estimates based on technical complexity and raising timeline, scope, and dependency risks early.
- Support production operations through debugging, root-cause analysis, monitoring, alerting, runbooks, incident response, and durable fixes using tooling such as Datadog.
- Mentor and onboard engineers across distributed teams, improving technical judgment, knowledge sharing, documentation, coding standards, and familiarity with shared libraries and platform patterns.
- Partner with the FDE, Product Owner, Scrum Master, QA, architecture stakeholders, and development leadership to coordinate priorities, releases, scope, technical direction, and delivery.