What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Python Engineer position at Motion Recruitment?
A mission-driven, research technology organization is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to join a small, high impact Search & Data Engineering team. This group builds and operates production systems that support secure data sharing, large scale data pipelines, and search infrastructure used by universities and scientific institutions worldwide. The stack is Python heavy, in a cloud environment, and deeply rooted in distributed systems and global scale.
This is not a typical data engineering role focused on maintaining existing pipelines. The team is building and evolving product level data and search platforms for systems that must scale, adapt to multiple use cases, and run reliably in customer environments. Engineers here are trusted with meaningful ownership, encouraged to explore new domains, and expected to contribute thoughtfully to system design and long-term technical direction. It’s an ideal environment for someone who enjoys autonomy, depth, and purpose in their work.
Required Skills & Experience
Tech Breakdown
Posted By: Rose Baldonado
This is not a typical data engineering role focused on maintaining existing pipelines. The team is building and evolving product level data and search platforms for systems that must scale, adapt to multiple use cases, and run reliably in customer environments. Engineers here are trusted with meaningful ownership, encouraged to explore new domains, and expected to contribute thoughtfully to system design and long-term technical direction. It’s an ideal environment for someone who enjoys autonomy, depth, and purpose in their work.
Required Skills & Experience
- Strong professional experience with Python in production systems
- Background in data engineering beyond basic ETL (designed or evolved pipelines)
- Experience building or operating distributed systems
- Comfort owning services end?to?end, including operational responsibility
- Ability to work independently while collaborating closely with a small team
- Experience with search platforms (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, or similar)
- Exposure to observability stacks or telemetry systems
- Familiarity with large?scale or parallel file systems (e.g., Lustre, GPFS, VAST)
- Big data tooling such as Spark or PySpark
- Customer facing engineering or support rotation experience
Tech Breakdown
- 50% Python services & distributed systems
- 25% Data pipelines, search, and storage integrations
- 25% Architecture, design tradeoffs, and technical leadership
- 70% Hands On Engineering
- 15% System design & technical decision making
- 15% Collaboration across product, platform, and support teams
- Bonus eligible
- Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
- Vacation Time
- Stock Options, DOE
Posted By: Rose Baldonado