Senior Backend Engineer

About Toptal

Toptal is a global network of top talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on-demand. With $200+ million in annual revenue and team members based around the globe, Toptal is the worlds largest fully remote workforce.

We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.

Job Summary:

As a Senior Back-end Engineer for Toptals Core team, you will help us scale for our continued growth as a game-changing, industry-defining company shaping the future of work.

We are a product team delivering value to the end-users working closely with the business. You will be part of a collaborative team within a newly launched business unit. Were developing advanced data and AI tools that empower companies to make smarter decisions and move faster in an increasingly intelligent world. You will have the opportunity to develop new features and improve the quality of the existing codebase. Every bit of work you do will have a direct impact on the companys revenue.

We dont cut corners, and we dont make compromiseswe build expertly designed web apps that are polished, fast, well-tested, and a joy to use.

We use NextJS to render client-facing pages and to run various experiments, and Python, SupaBase, GCP and AWS power a lot of our infrastructure. While you will be primarily responsible for back-end Python, database and LMM integration work, you will have an opportunity to develop your front-end skills, so if that sounds appealing, this is the right opportunity for you. You will also have the chance to explore new tools and frameworks, as we are always looking for ways to improve site performance and team productivity.

By joining Toptals Core team, youll work on meaningful initiatives and projects that have an impact on the bottom line of the company, with a team of highly skilled members from around the world.

This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere. Due to the remote nature of this role, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship. Resumes and communication must be submitted in English.

Responsibilities:

The following information is intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, or required skills.

• Design, build and maintain outstanding, reusable, and reliable Python components.
• Design and build AI Agents, MCP servers, and data classification components for training LLMs.
• Build and extend the current SaaS Toptal Core Platform platform through the development of APIs, and SDKs.
• Utilize generative development tools to create tests and perform AI-assisted testing of your features.
• Review your colleagues work, provide constructive feedback, and mentor others to help the team grow and improve.
• Continuously improve team processes, share ideas, and communicate your status and progress openly as a collaborative teammate.
  
  

In the first week, expect to:

• Begin your onboarding and integration into the team, learn the Toptal Core platform and meet the mentors that will support you through it.
• Get familiar with our product portfolio, team structure, and tech stack.
• Get familiar with our front-end and back-end architecture and all the tools that we use. Learn about the processes that we follow.
• Get familiar with our CICD and Testing processes.
  
  

In the first month, expect to:

• Attend regular meetings, like technical calls, retrospectives.
• Start working on regular team tasks and become familiar with the business domain.
• Start contributing to the technical topics as well, understand the application, and general platform architecture.
• Learn and take part in the utilization of the latest LMM, AI and Agent based technologies.
• Deliver value in regular cadence.
• Get comfortable with the daily work routine of our team.
• Review code written by your colleagues.
• Be ready to propose improvements to the teams processes and codebase.
  
  

In the first three months, expect to:

• Familiarize yourself with the teams business domain.
• Continue to contribute to our product development.
• Design and develop Python based AI Agents, Logic flows, LLM integrations.
• Develop a deeper understanding of our technology, processes and product pipeline.
• Attend regular meetings, like dailies, technical calls & retrospectives.
  
  

In the first six months, expect to:

• Lead technical initiatives in our team.
• Drive improvements to the codebase and processes.
  
  

In the first year, expect to:

• Have a detailed understanding of Toptals technical stack, collaboration rituals, processes and performance.
• Mentor Toptals new team members.
  
  

Qualifications and Job Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience working with Python and LMM-based Python libraries.
• 3+ years of Postgres and/or SupaBase, or related RDBMS experience.
• Have a confirmed grasp of object-oriented programming, clean code, and best testing practices.
• Familiarity with LangGraph or LangChain and related technologies.
• Familiarity with Redis, Kafka, and related caching and queueing technologies.
• Familiarity with NextJS, React, JavaScript, TypeScript and GraphQL is a plus.
• Experience with performance optimization of Python applications.
• Consider multiple quality dimensions like user impact, failure tolerance, code maintenance, implementation time, security breaches, and performance.
• Genuinely interested in technology and love to try new things.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Tackle complex problems but also consider multiple solutions, weigh them, and decide on the best course of action.
• You should be passionate about providing and receiving honest and constructive feedback.
• You should be willing to constantly learn and improve your skills to become a truly autonomous specialist.
• You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.
  
  

For Toptal Use Only: #individualcontributoreurope #individualcontributorSA