Staff Software Engineer, Backend Platform

Job summary

Responsibilities

As a Backend Platform Engineer at Harvey, you will help build and operate the cohesive backend platform that all our services run on. You’ll design and implement shared frameworks and libraries that abstract common concerns, improve developer experience, and raise the baseline for reliability and…

• Develop and maintain Harvey’s internal backend frameworks and libraries that provide common capabilities (API routing, service lifecycle management, caching and messaging…
• Create and improve APIs, service templates, and versioned interfaces that establish consistent patterns for building new services and features
• Introduce and champion modern backend architecture patterns like asynchronous I/O (asyncio) and streaming data processing, continually evolving our platform for better…
• Design Harvey-specific abstractions and domain-specific frameworks—covering cross-cutting concerns (e.g., authorization, streaming) and areas like data governance and event…
• Embed reliability and observability into the platform by building in tracing, metrics, and automated tests (shift-left), ensuring services built on our foundation are robust and…

What they're looking for

• 8+ years of software engineering experience (post-BS/MS), including building scalable backend systems or internal developer platforms
• Proficiency in Python (or similar languages) and deep knowledge of backend development fundamentals (APIs, data stores, concurrency, distributed systems)
• Hands-on experience with web frameworks and service architectures (e.g. Flask/FastAPI, Bounded context services, microservices) and an understanding of designing clean, versioned…
• Familiarity with caching, messaging, and database technologies (Redis, Kafka, SQL/NoSQL databases, Vector databases, etc.) and how to use them effectively for high performance…
• A track record of writing high-quality, well-tested code and using tools (unit/integration testing, static typing, CI) to catch issues early and ensure reliability

Tech stack

• Python
• FastAPI
• Kafka
• SQL