Location: Remote within the EU or UK (monthly travel to Germany) Contract Type: Freelance / Contract Start Date: ASAP About the Role We're looking for a Senior Python Backend Engineer to join a large-scale digital platform initiative in the European energy sector. The project focuses on building robust, high-performance backend services and APIs that power a complex data and application ecosystem. As a key member of the engineering team, you'll design, develop, and optimize Python-based backend systems - ensuring scalability, reliability, and clean architecture. Key Responsibilities Design and develop production-grade backend services and APIs in Python. Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code following modern engineering standards. Collaborate with other backend engineers and architects to define technical designs and ensure consistency across services. Participate in code reviews and technical discussions, contributing to architectural and design decisions. Mentor fellow developers and promote best practices in code quality, testing, and maintainability. Continuously improve performance, reliability, and developer efficiency through better tooling and processes. Your Profile You're an experienced backend engineer who takes pride in writing elegant, scalable Python code. You're deeply familiar with backend system design and modern development practices and enjoy working in collaborative, distributed teams. Required Skills & Experience 8 years of professional software development experience, primarily focused on backend engineering. Expert-level Python (3.9) programming skills, including asynchronous programming (asyncio, aiohttp) and concurrency patterns. Strong experience with FastAPI, Flask, or similar frameworks for developing RESTful or GraphQL APIs. Deep understanding of modular architecture, dependency injection, and clean software design principles. Experience with automated testing (pytest, unittest) and continuous integration workflows. Solid experience with databases: Relational: PostgreSQL NoSQL: Redis, MongoDB, ArangoDB, or Neo4J Familiarity with SQLAlchemy or equivalent ORM frameworks. Strong problem-solving and debugging skills, with attention to detail and maintainability. Nice to Have Experience with data pipelines, background task processing (Celery, RQ), or message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ). Familiarity with type checking (mypy, pydantic) and code quality tools (black, flake8). Interest in system performance optimization and scalable service architectures. Strong communication and collaboration skills in distributed teams. Contract Details Engagement: Independent contractor (B2B / Freelance) Location: Remote (within the EU or UK) On-site: Approx. one trip per month to Germany Start Date: ASAP Language: English