Lead Python Backend Engineer

We’re about to convince you that you need a new job… and that you’ve just found the perfect opportunity. We’re steadily growing, and we’re continuously looking to expand our team with experienced Python engineers.

Join Reef Technologies and work on your own terms:

• Contribute from wherever you like – we are fully remote.
• Pick your own working hours individually. Work on complex projects with global reach.
• Contribute to the decision-making process and influence the way we operate through our Sociocracy 3.0 process.

Remuneration on a B2B contract:

• 75–90 USD or 325–390 PLN per hour, or
• 12600–15120 USD or 54600–65520 PLN a month if you do 40 hours per week
• Flexible work schedule (measured by time tracker).
• We automatically adjust rates based on inflation. 

Additional perks of working at Reef Technologies:

• We offer a stable position at an established company in a booming industry.
• We cover reasonable coworking space expenses.
• You’ll be assigned a private assistant to save time on personal obligations.
• You’ll get financial help to buy the necessary hardware.
• You’ll work in a multicultural environment where everyone has a say.
• You’ll get to use your English skills on an everyday basis.
• You’ll get to take advantage of our flexible leave policy.

And don’t forget that you’ll be free to work wherever and whenever you want to. We believe that you’ll do your part by independently taking the right decisions.

Our only expectation timewise is for you to contribute around 30–40 hours per week, which we believe is optimal for sustainable full-time engagement in a remote setting. You’re free to distribute those hours throughout the week in the way that you find the most convenient, within reason.

We want to ensure proper work-life balance and create an environment where you can focus on your code while at work, and on whatever brings you pleasure in your free time. 

That is why, as one of our benefits, we offer the services of a private assistant. Appointments, research, online shopping, and more – you choose which tasks to pass on to your assistant.

Lead Python Engineer wanted

Do you have at least 5 years of programming experience – at least a year with Python - including open source and significant personal projects, not just jobs? If so, you have probably written so much Python code in your life that at times you want to express your thoughts through list comprehensions.

While programming skills are crucial, we're sure you realize just like we do that they're not enough to keep delivering quality software to clients. As a dynamic company focused on high-value and high-difficulty projects, we're looking for more than an experienced Pythonista – we need somebody with:

• Two years minimum of experience in team management, as this position requires leading and guiding a team.
• Project management skills: Experience in planning, estimating, and overseeing the execution of complex backend projects from start to finish.
• Client communication: Confidence in discussing technical matters with clients, managing expectations, and translating business requirements into technical solutions.
• Strategic thinking: Capacity to anticipate technical challenges, identify opportunities for innovation, and contribute to the company's long-term technical vision.
• Strong technical leadership: Ability to guide and mentor other developers, help make key architectural decisions, and ensure code quality across projects.
• Team development: Skill in fostering a collaborative environment, facilitating knowledge sharing, and helping team members grow professionally. 
• Ownership Mentality: You take full responsibility for your code from the first line to deployment, ensuring it is rock-solid, efficient, and reliable.
• Proactiveness: You see projects through from start to finish and always think ahead to anticipate potential issues.

As a Lead Python Engineer, you'll be expected to drive and motivate others, organize priorities, and ensure we consistently deliver value for our clients. You'll play a key role in shaping our technical direction and maintaining our reputation for excellence.

Does all this sound like you? Great – that means you’re exactly the type of person that we’re looking for! If you’d like to see what it’s like to work with Python natives who all bring their long-standing expertise to the table, please get in touch. Spoiler alert: it’s great. And if you do have a great deal of confidence in your programming skills, but you’d rather not primarily organize things, check out our Senior Python Backend Engineer opening.

We hope you’re almost convinced at this point, but we have good manners, so let us introduce ourselves further. Do you want to find out more about the company? We were hoping you’d ask.

Get to know your future company

Reef Technologies is a fully remote Python backend software house. We’re a small, agile, senior-only team. All of our current members have more than seven years of strong experience, so we don’t ever have anything urgent to fix. We only deliver stable solutions, as we have developed a system that has delivered more than a hundred challenging projects in the last three years. We’d like to improve it even further with you on the team.

The demand for our work is extremely high, so we get to pick and choose the projects that we want to take on – and the same goes for you. Before you’re assigned to a project, you’ll be personally asked if you’re interested in that particular task and if you don’t like it, you’ll just get something else. That’s the beauty of having a sales team that greatly outperforms our delivery capacity.

Let your code have a real impact

Thanks to the group decision-making framework, Sociocracy 3.0, every member of the team can be sure that their opinion will be valued. (Check it out here, you’ll wonder how you’d survive in traditional organizations until now!) 

The Founder of our company doesn’t only take care of sales, bureaucracy, and client relationships - he is also a programmer, so all of us really do work together and understand the job at hand.

What type of projects would you work on? We mainly accept offers from startups and small-to-medium businesses from the US, the UK, and Canada. Some projects may only last a couple of hours, while others take even a few years for us to complete. There is one thing that you can be sure of, though - that it will always be your personal choice whether to work on a particular project or reject it.

Our main project right now is a trustless supercluster of performance-proofed GPU-enabled sandboxed docker container runners controlled by truly decentralized algorithms (not just PAXOS or RAFT).

Other projects included:

• financial data warehouse, which aggregates over 31 000 time series into a few hundred charts for a fintech company from London
• graph data search/visualization system for auditors/investigators from Norway
• super scalable WAF optimized down to extremely low running costs for a client from Chicago, IL
• multisource cloud object synthesizer library for a storage provider from San Mateo, CA
• report generator/inventory tracker for an e-commerce/healthcare company from Canada
• k8s-based revenue optimizer for large private GPU compute clusters in North America
• paper product level tracker for toilet cleaners from Canada
• hydrant certification report generator for Australian plumbers
• multi-tenant hospitality management system for large properties in the US
• large scale information display system for retailers (international)

We have already delivered those, but you can be sure we’ve got even more exciting projects coming up in the future. 

All that without ever setting foot in an office. We have completed those projects – and many more – from the comfort of our own homes, from tropical beaches and from our favorite coffee shops. Some of us work early in the morning, others start off late in the night. Each of us is free to choose their own programming environment. We know our engineers are competent enough to organize their work and achieve top productivity in their own way. Do you think you'd enjoy this type of freedom?

Want to know more?

• Check out the Reef Technologies Handbook to see our company policies.
• Want to see what our clients have to say about our work? We’re quite proud of our Clutch profile.
• Get to know the Founder, Paweł Polewicz, through his 30-minute talk about building teams with the best programmers out there and why being great at programming is not enough to be considered a top dev.
• Did the part about Sociocracy 3.0 sound exciting? See how we explain exactly how it works with examples.

Does this sound like a job you might enjoy, but you’re afraid your experience may not be enough? Then you should check out our Senior Python Backend Engineer opening as well.