Senior Backend Engineer - Urban SDK

About Urban SDK

Urban SDK is shaping the Future of Smart Cities. We are pioneers in geospatial AI technology, providing public leaders with insights and automation for mission-critical decisions. We equip critical public services with geospatial AI, enabling precise, data-driven decisions with efficiency and confidence.

Our Commitment to People

We are committed to aligning business growth with professional outcomes for every employee. Our commitment has been recognized by Jacksonville Business Journal and Will Reed as a noted Best Places to Work.

About the role

We are hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to design and build scalable data-intensive systems using Python and modern big data tooling. You will work on data pipelines, APIs, and backend services that process large datasets using dataframes, Parquet, and Databricks, enabling analytics and visualization products at scale. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys working close to data, cares deeply about performance and reliability, and can own backend systems end-to-end.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain backend services and data pipelines using Python
• Work extensively with dataframes (Pandas, PySpark, or similar) to process large datasets
• Build and optimize data pipelines using Parquet and columnar storage formats
• Develop and maintain workflows on Databricks
• Optimize performance for large-scale, distributed data processing
• Design and maintain APIs that support data-heavy applications
• Collaborate closely with front-end, data, and product teams
• Ensure data quality, reliability, and observability
• Participate in architectural decisions and technical planning
• Mentor other engineers and lead code reviews

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend or data engineering experience
• Strong proficiency in Python
• Deep experience with dataframes (Pandas, PySpark, Dask, or similar)
• Hands-on experience with big data processing and distributed systems
• Strong experience working with Parquet and columnar data formats
• Experience using Databricks in production environments
• Solid understanding of data modeling, performance tuning, and memory optimization
• Experience building and maintaining APIs (REST and/or gRPC)
• Strong debugging, testing, and problem-solving skills

Nice to Have

• Experience deploying and operating systems on AWS
• S3, EC2, EKS, Lambda, IAM, etc.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation)
• Experience with containerization and deployment (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and automated deployments
• Experience with streaming systems (Kafka, Kinesis)
• Background in analytics, geospatial data, or data platfo