Senior Backend Platform Engineer

AMERICAN SYSTEMS is an employee-owned federal government contractor supporting national priority programs through our strategic solutions in the areas of Information Technology, Engineering & Analysis, Test & Evaluation, and Training. Responsibilities Design, build, migrate, and sustain DTE&A Data Management Platform (DDMP) secure domain services, data-access layer, integration APIs, workflow automation, and AI-enabled back-end capabilities. Key Responsibilities Lead the modernization of existing DDMP Python/Flask services and legacy MySQL/MongoDB data into secure, scalable cloud-native services. Design and implement business APIs for assessments, evaluation, findings, recommendations, reconciliation threads, reports, artifacts, and approval history. Build secure, observable integrations with enterprise data sources, program-management systems, SharePoint, telemetry streams, and analytics platforms. Develop data-ingestion, transformation, validation, and reconciliation services that preserve data integrity and provenance. Implement workflow automation and AI-assisted capabilities while ensuring analysts remain the accountable authority for official findings and scores. Establish API standards, coding standards, data-quality controls, service-level objectives, and technical documentation. Partner with security and cloud engineering staff to remediate vulnerabilities, implement secure configurations, and generate ATO evidence. Qualifications BS, TS/SCI eligible with 11+ years of professional back-end software engineering experience, including 3+ years delivering cloud-native, distributed, or microservices-based applications. AWS Certified Developer, Microsoft Azure Developer Associate, Google Professional Cloud Developer, or comparable CSP credential. Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) or equivalent practical Kubernetes expertise. Security+ or equivalent certification. Expert-level Python experience, including modern API and service frameworks such as FastAPI, Flask, Django, or equivalent. Experience decomposing a monolithic Flask application into modular services without disrupting active users or data integrity. Experience designing domain-driven systems and workflow engines for complex, auditable business processes. Knowledge of API gateway patterns, API versioning, throttling, idempotency, OpenAPI specifications, OAuth/OIDC token validation, and service-to-service authentication. Experience with Change Data Capture (CDC), database replication, data quality controls, lineage, and data reconciliation. Experience integrating with Microsoft 365/SharePoint Online through Microsoft Graph while maintaining SharePoint as the authoritative artifact repository. Experience implementing retrieval-augmented generation, document extraction, NLP workflows, model-evaluation controls, and human-in-the-loop AI decision support. Familiarity with DoW data platforms, secure cross-boundary integrations, and auditability requirements. Deep experience designing and implementing REST APIs; practical GraphQL experience strongly preferred. Strong relational-data expertise, especially PostgreSQL: data modeling, schema evolution, migrations, query optimization, indexing, transactions, high availability, backup/restore, and replication. Experience migrating legacy data platforms, preferably MySQL and MongoDB to PostgreSQL and/or managed cloud data services, with validation, reconciliation, rollback, and minimal-downtime approaches. Experience with event-driven architecture, asynchronous processing, queues, and streaming platforms such as Kafka, Kinesis, RabbitMQ, SQS, or equivalent. Experience building ETL/ELT, data-ingestion, document-processing, and API-integration pipelines for structured and unstructured content, including JSON, XML, CSV, PDF, and Office documents. Strong expertise in automated testing: unit, integration, contract, regression, performance, and API security testing. Experience packaging applications with Docker and deploying to Kubernetes or a managed container platform. Proficiency with Git-based development and CI/CD pipelines, ideally GitLab CI/CD in a DoW enterprise environment. Pay Transparency Statement AMERICAN SYSTEMS is committed to pay transparency for our applicants and employee-owners. The salary range for this position is USD $135,000.00/Yr. - USD $165,000/Yr. Actual compensation will be determined based on several factors permitted by law. AMERICAN SYSTEMS provides for the welfare of its employees and their dependents through a comprehensive benefits program by offering healthcare benefits, paid leave, retirement plans, insurance programs, and education and training assistance. EEO Statement EEO Race/Sex/Disability Status/Veteran Status