{"id":2965115,"url":"https://alion.io/job/seesaw-senior-backend-platform-engineer-systems-integration-async-workflows","title":"Senior Backend / Platform Engineer - Systems Integration & Async Workflows","company":{"id":41557,"name":"Seesaw","domain":"seesaw.social","url":"https://alion.io/company/seesaw-social","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"contractor","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Mexico City, Mexico","Mexico"],"countries":["MX"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":57000,"max_usd":112000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":10},"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"GraphQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Rest API","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon Aurora","optional":true},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":true},{"name":"DynamoDB","optional":true},{"name":"ElasticSearch","optional":true},{"name":"OpenSearch","optional":true},{"name":"Redis","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true},{"name":"WebSockets","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-20T21:01:02Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-21","last_verified_at":"2026-10-25T13:23:38Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":4,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":4},"description":"Own complex, hands-on backend changes on a focused team entrusted with modernizing critical production systems.\nABOUT SEESAW\nSeesaw helps elementary educators deliver joyful, inclusive learning experiences through interactive instruction, digital portfolios, and connections between teachers, students, and families. Our mission is to provide every elementary student with joyful and connected learning experiences that lay the foundation for success in life.\nYOUR TEAM\nYou will join a small, dedicated group of senior engineers assembled specifically for one of Seesaw's most critical technology initiatives. This is not a business-as-usual maintenance assignment: the team has a focused mandate to make consequential improvements to the foundations of our production platform. The group reports directly to our Director of Platforms, who will serve as the team's engineering manager and lead the work day to day. Working closely with experienced Core Platform engineers, you'll have meaningful technical ownership, direct access to engineering leadership, and the opportunity to shape systems that support millions of educators, students, and families. Our emphasis is on thoughtful architecture, hands-on execution, and incremental delivery without compromising security or reliability.\nYOUR ROLE\nWe're looking for a versatile senior backend engineer who can navigate an established SaaS codebase and deliver complex changes across every path a request or event takes: synchronous APIs, background jobs, scheduled tasks, and data pipelines. You'll move comfortably between production services, serverless functions, edge functions, shared libraries, automation, integration tests, and operational tooling. The role is primarily backend-focused and includes authentication and request-routing paths.\nYOUR RESPONSIBILITIES\nImprove existing Python backend services, REST and GraphQL APIs, and shared libraries to support evolving platform capabilities.\nEnsure request and job context is carried consistently across APIs, background tasks, scheduled jobs, serverless functions, and event consumers.\nEvolve authentication, session, and request-routing logic, including edge/CDN functions and identity lookups that direct a request to the right backend before application code runs.\nDesign and harden asynchronous processing and change-data pipelines with idempotency, retries, replay, backfill, and failure recovery.\nImplement scoped service modernization and integration work in collaboration with specialist engineers.\nBuild practical automation for compatibility testing, operational workflows, deployment checks, and safe changes.\nResolve integration problems across services, jobs, event flows, configuration, and data access layers.\nAdapt third-party integrations (SSO/OAuth providers, email, push, SMS, secrets) so they work correctly across multiple environments and hostnames.\nExpand automated integration, regression, and end-to-end testing to protect customer experiences.\nInstrument and troubleshoot production behaviors and simplify difficult legacy code paths.\nWHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR\n7+ years of professional backend engineering experience with meaningful ownership of complex production systems; equivalent demonstrated experience considered.\nStrong Python and AWS skills and experience working in a multi-service SaaS codebase, including both container-based services and serverless functions.\nDeep understanding of partial failures, consistency tradeoffs, concurrency, asynchronous workflows, and idempotency.\nSound API, authentication, data-access, background job, and production debugging fundamentals.\nDemonstrated success evolving existing services in a live environment without prolonged disruption.\nAbility to make rapid, readable, well-tested changes without sacrificing operational reliability.\nStrong independent delivery, clear communication, and comfort owning consequential work in a small, director-led engineering team.\nNICE TO HAVE\nExperience with service modernization or large-scale platform evolution.\nGraphQL APIs, event-driven architectures, message queues, or workflow orchestration.\nCloudFront or comparable edge functions, token/session design, and SSO or OAuth integrations (e.g., Clever, ClassLink, Google).\nDynamoDB Streams or comparable change-data-capture pipelines, and Elasticsearch/OpenSearch indexing.\nRedis/Valkey, websockets, or Aurora/relational stores alongside NoSQL.\nFamiliarity with DynamoDB or relational databases, Terraform, and CI/CD workflows.\nWHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE\nCross-service changes ship steadily and safely; every request, job, and event path behaves predictably under failure and retry; integration gaps are resolved with automated verification; and operational workflows become more dependable while the platform continues to run at scale.\nCONTRACT ENGAGEMENT\nThis is a senior, hands-on individual-contributor contract opportunity with a dedicated team led by the Director of Platforms. Engagement duration, location/working arrangement, and commercial terms will be discussed during recruiting.\nA note on language: Our team collaborates daily with US-based colleagues in English, so please submit your resume and application materials in English. We’re unable to review applications submitted in other languages.\nSeesaw values diverse perspectives and welcomes qualified candidates from all backgrounds. We aim to build inclusive teams that reflect the educators, students, and families we serve.\nOur company participates in E-Verify.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5504,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":7,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"All levels","optional":true}]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Social Networks"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-20T23:55:14Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.9,"p_room":1,"age_days":4,"expected_fill_days":27,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-25T05:49:26Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/seesaw-senior-backend-platform-engineer-systems-integration-async-workflows","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/seesaw-senior-backend-platform-engineer-systems-integration-async-workflows.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-25T13:58:46Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":19950,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-26T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":41557},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=41557"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fseesaw-senior-backend-platform-engineer-systems-integration-async-workflows"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fseesaw-senior-backend-platform-engineer-systems-integration-async-workflows"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fseesaw-senior-backend-platform-engineer-systems-integration-async-workflows"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/seesaw-senior-backend-platform-engineer-systems-integration-async-workflows\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fseesaw-senior-backend-platform-engineer-systems-integration-async-workflows"}]}