Senior Engineer – Backend Lead

About PressW

PressW is where some of the world's most ambitious companies come to actually ship AI.

We're redefining how businesses harness AI by building real systems for real clients, not just selling slides about what's possible. We're a team of three exited AI founders and a group of Applied AI Engineers based in Austin, and we've been heads-down for the last few years building this firm into something we're proud of: more than 70 production AI solutions shipped, 40+ clients across seven industries, and over $50M in measurable profit gains delivered. We work on the bleeding edge of what AI can do, guide our clients to the right solutions for their business, and ship the infrastructure they run on.

We sell across three divisions. Managed AI is our MSP, purpose-built for institutional investors: private equity firms, venture capital funds, asset managers, and capital markets clients. We map how a firm actually works, deploy custom agents into the workflows that consume deal teams' time (reading deal documents, drafting IC memos, scoring targets, triaging inbound, structuring offers, monitoring portfolio companies), and keep evolving those systems as models and firm needs change. AI Engineering embeds our teams directly with clients to build and harden production AI systems. AI Transformation handles roadmap and readiness work, helping leaders figure out what to build, in what order, and how to prepare for it.

Job Description

You will be the backend lead on PressW's healthcare scheduling platform rebuild (codename Phoenix), reporting to the Principal Engineer. The platform is a large monolith being incrementally replaced using a strangler fig pattern: a new FastAPI application sits in front of the legacy system as a reverse proxy, takes over one functional area at a time, and rolls out per-tenant with feature flags. The backend surface area is the center of gravity: service layer, APIs, legacy endpoint wrappers, data model, and the cut-over path from old to new.

You are also the team's primary cloud infrastructure owner. The client's DevOps team collaborates on deployment pipelines and rollout execution, but someone on PressW's side needs to own the infrastructure decisions and implementation. That is this role.

Responsibilities

• Partner with the Principal Engineer to lead backend architecture and implementation. Build FastAPI service layer controllers, Pydantic schemas, and legacy-compatible endpoint wrappers that let the old frontend work against the new backend without changes.

• Port service groups from the legacy system (Python 2.7, legacy web framework) to FastAPI (Python 3.13+/SQLAlchemy 2.0), one functional area at a time. You are the primary backend driver for this work across multiple service groups over multiple quarters.

• Own cloud infrastructure on PressW's side: Kubernetes (EKS), networking, IAM, compute, data services, observability. Collaborate with the client's DevOps team on deployment pipelines and rollout execution.

• Partner with the Data Engineering Lead on translation layer integration (database views, write mappers, dual-write patterns) and migration sequencing.

• Drive code quality, review standards, and testing discipline across the backend.

• Mentor mid-level engineers and help the Principal set the technical bar.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience. Strong hands-on Python required. TypeScript familiarity preferred (there is a dedicated Frontend Lead, but cross-stack awareness helps).

• Production cloud infrastructure experience, with depth in Kubernetes. You have owned infrastructure decisions and implementation, not just deployed to someone else's setup.

• Strong PostgreSQL fundamentals: schema design, migrations, performance tuning, and working with views. Experience with Aurora PostgreSQL a plus.

• Experience working on a system rebuild, decomposition, or large-scale migration where old and new systems ran side by side.

• Must have shipped meaningful code in the last 2 years.

Preferred

• Terraform or equivalent IaC.

• Healthcare, HIPAA, or regulated-data experience.

• FastAPI and/or SQLAlchemy experience.

• Event-driven systems (Kafka, message bus migration). One phase of this engagement replaces a legacy message bus and task queue with Kafka.

• AI-assisted development workflows (Claude Code, agent frameworks, MCP).

Why Join PressW

You will own the backend outcome on a 12-month engagement rebuilding a platform that serves 1,000+ healthcare customers. Small team, high autonomy, real stakes.

PressW is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Please note that only qualified candidates will be contacted for an interview. Thank you for your interest in PressW!