Senior Backend Engineer - Commodities
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 12, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 9, 2026. Kpler scores B on the Alion truth index.
About the Role
As a Senior Software Engineer on our founding Connected Supply Chain team, you will serve as a core technical owner extending Kpler’s real-time trade intelligence platform into North American inland supply chains. You will lead the design, implementation, and operation of major platform subsystems-fusing real-time pipeline sensor telemetry, rail, and waterway data with existing maritime tracking. Operating on a high-autonomy "you build it, you run it" model, your work will directly deliver a unified, production basin-to-export terminal intelligence platform to paying customers.
Key Responsibilities
Design, build, and operate major platform components end-to-end, spanning high-throughput streaming ingestion (Kafka, Airflow, Python/FastAPI) to web applications (TypeScript/Vue).
Lead subsystem architecture by writing design specifications, conducting peer reviews, and making pragmatic build-versus-adapt decisions.
Guarantee production operational excellence through rigorous SLO management, comprehensive system observability, on-call rotation, and incident response.
Architect data quality frameworks-including telemetry validation, reconciliation, and time-series monitoring-to ensure field sensor data is accurate and reliable.
Collaborate with core marine tracking and data platform teams to seamlessly integrate inland data feeds into Kpler's broader platform architecture.
Mentor mid-level engineers through technical design guidance, code reviews, and pair programming while setting team-wide engineering conventions.
Partner directly with early customers (traders, analysts, operations teams) and product leaders to demo features, gather feedback, and shape product roadmaps.
Experience & Background
5+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating distributed production systems.
Proven experience architecting event-driven or data-intensive systems using streaming technologies like Kafka or similar message queues.
Strong backend engineering mastery in Python and REST API design (e.g., FastAPI), alongside comfort contributing to frontend surfaces (TypeScript/Vue).
Direct experience managing production cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred), including SLO establishment, incident management, and deep observability.
Demonstrated capability to mentor engineers, guide technical discussions, and engage directly with end-users or stakeholders.
Experience with Scala or running Elasticsearch clusters at scale.
Hands-on background handling IoT telemetry, remote sensor feeds, time-series data, or geospatial datasets.
Domain knowledge in energy, oil & gas, or global commodities markets.
Prior experience as an early or founding engineer in a new product initiative.