Python Backend Engineer

Senior Python Backend Engineer - Real Time Distributed Systems
£550/day Outside IR35
Watford/Hybrid (hybrid for 2 weeks, then mainly remote)
4-month contract

If you're the type of engineer who enjoys solving complex Back End problems rather than building CRUD applications, this is the sort of contract you'll want to look at.

We're working with a highly engineering-led technology company building a large-scale, Real Time platform that processes millions of events across distributed Azure infrastructure.

This isn't a consultancy project or a Legacy migration.

You'll be joining an experienced engineering team responsible for designing, building and improving production-grade Python services that power critical, Real Time systems used every day.

What you'll be working on You'll build highly scalable Back End services that:

• Process high volumes of Real Time events
• Power distributed microservice architectures
• Handle asynchronous workloads at scale
• Improve platform resilience and fault tolerance
• Optimise low-latency data ingestion pipelines
• Build systems that continue performing under heavy production load

This is genuinely hands-on engineering. You'll spend your time writing code, solving difficult technical problems and improving production systems, not producing documentation or sitting in architecture meetings all day.

The technology

You'll be working with a modern cloud-native stack including:

• Python
• FastAPI
• Azure Functions
• Azure Service Bus/Event Hub
• Kubernetes (AKS)
• Docker
• Cosmos DB
• Event-driven microservices
• Distributed messaging
• Real Time processing pipelines

What they're looking for

They're interested in engineers who have built and supported production Back End systems at scale.
You'll likely have experience with:

• Commercial Python Back End development
• Distributed systems and microservice architectures
• Asynchronous programming and concurrency
• Event-driven or message-based platforms
• High-throughput production environments
• Building resilient services with strong observability, retry logic and fault handling
• Debugging complex production issues

This role would particularly suit someone who enjoys working close to the platform and still spends the majority of their day writing code.
Bonus experience

Any experience in the following would be highly advantageous:

• FastAPI
• Azure-native Back End development
• Kubernetes/AKS
• Kafka, RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus or Event Hub
• IoT, telemetry or time-series data platforms

Why this contract?

• Outside IR35
• Modern Python engineering stack
• Complex technical challenges rather than routine feature work
• Engineering-first culture with experienced developers
• Large-scale distributed systems
• High levels of autonomy and ownership
• Single-stage technical interview process
• Immediate start

If you're an experienced Python engineer looking for a genuinely challenging Back End contract where you'll be building high-performance distributed systems, not simply maintaining APIs we'd love to speak with you.