Python Backend Senior Engineer

We started Specter with a vision of building the Bloomberg of private markets. We acknowledge that is a lofty ambition and are still very much at the beginning of our journey. However, you won't find many companies that spend as much time as we do – thinking about the edge in the private markets. We can't really say, but it may be one of the reasons why over 300 leading VC and PE firms use Specter every day to discover actionable insights.

As a small, fast-moving team, we take pride in our ability to ship quickly and effectively. You'll be joining us at an exciting time as we need to both scale to meet all increasing demand and have the opportunity to create magical new product experiences on top of our industry-leading data with AI.

We're proud to move fast. Check out our release notes to see what's new on the product side—but there's just as much happening behind the scenes.

We also love AI both in our products and workflows, and take testing pretty serious as with 20+ data sources there are otherwise always problems that sneak in.

We are also proud that our data is used to find & invest some truly awesome companies by our clients.

We have been building a new Python/FastAPI backend to support a faster, more scalable, and more complex product. In the past, we had a full-stack typescript application, and with this new FastAPI backend we are refactoring our typescript application to becoming frontend-only.

Meanwhile, this transition unblocks us to develop new product experiences in the same data our data pipelines are written in and therefore make it easier to build more "real-time" product experiences like AI agents.

In this role you will take a lead-role working on this new FastAPI backend and be responsible for us having a stable, well-architected system on which we can iterate quickly.

Key challenges include optimizing queries to our two databases (Postgres for user data, ClickHouse for entity data), supporting both internal and client-facing APIs, and ensuring a smooth frontend integration.

We love collaborating closely and engineers that enjoy getting involved across the broader tech stack. As such it's a big plus if you have knowledge of:

frontend / typescript to work with the product team (and ideally on frontend code) to best utilize the API

DBs / data engineering skills to work closely with the data team.

Here are a few of the key people you'd be interacting with:

Henry has architected our new Python backend and all client-facing APIs. With his vast experience he's a true unicorn, working across databases, frontend, backend, and infrastructure to make sure everything ties together nicely.

Josh leads the frontend team and has built and designed the majority of the product over the course of his close to 3 year tenure at Specter.

Jan both product manages the team and builds the first prototypes for many of our new features, such as network tracking or our AI agent. He brings experience as a serial founder in data and trading.

We're looking for someone who gets excited about building systems that deliver real value to users. You take ownership and care deeply about the real-world impact of what you build.

Further you have:

Strong experience with Python & FastAPI

Solid SQL/postgres skills and an interest in query performance

Some typescript experience (RemixJS is a plus)

Excited by moving fast and building products end-to-end

A big plus:

Experience with ClickHouse or similar column-oriented databases

Ability to work on frontend features directly when needed

Experience with API design and development

A plus:

Experience with infrastructure architecture and DevOps

Familiarity with data engineering principles

Initial chat to discuss the role, learn about each other and explore whether it's a good fit

Coding exercise - a domain-specific exercise that doesn't require any preparation. No white-boarding

One-hour general technical interview [+ exercise review]

Final interview - a chance to have a general discussion, meet the rest of the team and make sure we're the perfect fit for each other. You'll have learnt more about us by this stage, and this is a chance to have any remaining questions answered

We'd love to hear from you no matter who you are or where you are If you are interested and want to join Specter, you can email us at

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Please note that we are doing interviews on a rolling basis.