Backend Software Engineer - Python / Django (Backstage)

About Us

At Cast & Crew, we’ve empowered creativity and supported the global entertainment industry for decades. Together with our family of brands - Backstage, CAPS, Checks & Balances, Final Draft, Media Services, Sargent-Disc, and The TEAM Companies – we operate as a combined entertainment technology and services provider offering industry standard screenwriting accounting software, digital payroll products, data & reporting, and a host of creative tools.  The industry continues to move faster than ever, and the need for our expertise, our technology, and our people has never been greater.  We are a production’s best ally every step of the way. #OneCastOneCrew

Backstage is the largest talent marketplace for the entertainment industry, media, brand marketers, and other content creators, matching their creative projects with the best actors, voiceover artists, production crew, and other industry professionals. Employers around the world use our best-in-class technology to staff over 50,000 creative projects a year in film, television, commercials, branded content, theater, experiential marketing, and more.

Backstage is seeking a mid-level Backend Software Engineer to join our passionate web team. Our backend web team includes mid and senior level engineers, tech leads, and a Director of Engineering. This team is a part of Backstage’s larger product and engineering department, which includes frontend, backend, iOS, and devops engineers, designers, product managers, data analysts, and quality assurance resources.  We value curiosity, trust, and impact, and we foster a culture of constant learning and improvement where teammates work together to accomplish user-focused initiatives. While we are open to strong remote candidates, there is a strong preference for NYC-area candidates who are able to come into our Chelsea office a couple of days a month for in-person collaboration.

Our process is a modified Kanban process with the goal of delivering incremental value to the customer. Products are workshopped and then broken into milestones, with estimates driven by engineers, not managers. We uphold autonomy and trust our engineers to pick the best tools suited for their tasks, while working collaboratively towards mutual goals.

In line with our goal to continue delivering value to the customer, we release multiple times a day, every day, and adhere to a robust QA and code review process before any code is released.

As a backend engineer, you will be working with cutting edge technology and new product development in a stable and rapidly growing company. You will be partnering with our product and tech leads to design and architect new features. This is an individual contributor role, and you will be empowered to make your own decisions about implementations and given autonomy to complete your work at your own pace.

The Backend Software Engineer will report to our Director of Backend Engineering.

What You’ll Do:

• Partner with product, marketing, business intelligence, and design teams to develop new product features and enhancements

• Design engineering plans to meet the requirements of the product or goal

• Design, build and maintain efficient, reusable, and reliable Python code

• Contribute to and influence the overall backend architecture decisions

• Work closely with product, marketing, and customer service to translate customer feedback into successful features and tools

• Collaborate with backend engineers outside your feature team to maintain shared code and infrastructure

• Coordinate with frontend engineers to provide a cohesive experience

• Use both technical and relational skills to lead large scale projects to completion

• Collaborate, mentor, and learn with a high-performing team of engineers

What we’re looking for from you:

• Minimum 4+ years professional experience building a major product or feature from scratch at scale for a large public-facing web application

• Advanced proficiency with Python and Django

• Solid database skills in a relational database (i.e., PostgresSQL, MySQL, etc.)

• Experience with Elasticsearch a plus

• Experience in developing RESTful APIs.

• Strong unit test and debugging skills.

• Experience incrementally rolling out new features, components or refactors without blocking the rest of the team, and iterating upon and maintaining live products<