Backend Software Engineer (API-focused)

Off Duty Management is seeking a mid‑level Backend Software Engineer focused on API development to join their on‑site team in Katy, Texas. In this role, you will design, build, and maintain FastAPI microservices that power the OfficerTRAK platform, collaborating with frontend, mobile, and DevOps engineers to ensure API contracts and data models align with product needs.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement production‑grade FastAPI services, establishing clean, versioned RESTful API contracts, request/response schemas via Pydantic, and clear service boundaries within a microservice ecosystem.
• Own data modeling and query design, creating normalized PostgreSQL schemas, optimizing SQL queries, and managing migrations with tooling like Alembic as services evolve.
• Develop reliable asynchronous workflows, building and maintaining Celery tasks and queues for background processing, retries, and scheduled jobs.
• Deliver and operate services on the Azure/Kubernetes platform, containerizing components, deploying to AKS, and diagnosing live production issues.
• Integrate authentication, authorization, and security from inception, implementing OAuth2/JWT auth, RBAC, and adhering to API security best practices (OWASP API Top 10, input validation, secrets management).
• Write meaningful, layered test coverage including unit, integration, and functional/end‑to‑end tests (pytest) to enable rapid, reliable shipping.
• Participate in code reviews and design discussions, offering and incorporating feedback to guide API and data model decisions across the team.
• Instrument services for observability with logging, metrics, and tracing to facilitate quick diagnosis in production.
• Collaborate cross‑functionally with frontend, mobile, and DevOps engineers to define API contracts and keep services aligned with product needs.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, maintaining automated build, test, and deployment workflows for the services you own.

Requirements

• 3+ years of professional backend development experience with production Python workloads.
• Hands‑on expertise in building production APIs with FastAPI.
• Strong knowledge of relational database design, normalization, and SQL optimization (PostgreSQL preferred).
• Experience with Celery or an equivalent distributed task queue for asynchronous processing.
• Experience deploying and operating services in Kubernetes, ideally on Azure (AKS).
• Practical experience writing unit, integration, and functional tests (pytest or similar) as part of normal development workflows.
• Working knowledge of authentication and authorization standards (OAuth2, JWT, API keys, RBAC).
• Understanding of API security practices (OWASP API Top 10, input sanitization, secrets management, rate limiting).
• Comfort with Git‑based collaboration (pull requests, code reviews, branching strategies).
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker) and CI/CD pipelines.
• Clear communication and a collaborative, ownership‑driven approach to engineering work.

Technologies

• Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Pydantic, Alembic
• Celery, Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka
• Kubernetes, AKS, Azure
• Pytest, OAuth2, JWT, API keys, RBAC
• OpenAPI/Swagger, Docker
• OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana
• Terraform, Helm, Azure Key Vault, Azure Container Registry
• Azure Monitor / App Insights

Preferred Skills and Qualifications

• Experience with Azure‑specific services (Azure Key Vault, Azure Container Registry, Azure Monitor / App Insights).
• Familiarity with API documentation tooling (OpenAPI/Swagger).
• Experience with message brokers supporting Celery (Redis, RabbitMQ).
• Experience with database migration tooling (Alembic).
• Exposure to observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) and distributed tracing.
• Exposure to Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Helm).
• Understanding of domain‑driven design or broader microservice architecture patterns.
• Experience scaling APIs for a growing SaaS platform.