Senior Software Engineer, Backend Development (Python)

About the role

Grade Level (for internal use): 03 Who We Are Kensho is S&P Global's hub for AI innovation and transformation . With expertise in Machine Learning and data discovery, we develop and deploy novel solutions for S&P Global and its customers worldwide. Our solutions help businesses harness the power of data and Artificial Intelligence to innovate and drive progress. Kensho's solutions and research focus on Generative AI, LLM Agents, speech recognition, entity linking, document extraction, text classification, natural language processing, and more. At Kensho, we hire talented people and give them the autonomy and support needed to build amazing technology and products. We collaborate using our teammates' diverse perspectives to solve hard problems. Our communication with one another is open, honest, and efficient. We dedicate time and resources to explore new ideas, but always rooted in engineering best practices. As a result, we can innovate rapidly to produce technology that is scalable, robust, and useful. Kensho's Applications group builds the applications, backend services, and APIs that deliver Kensho's AI capabilities to customers. Our teams are small, product-focused, and committed to shipping reliable, well-architected systems that scale. We work closely with Machine Learning, Product, and Infrastructure teams to turn advanced AI technology into high-quality, production-ready software. The Applications group provides the core services, orchestration layers, and API frameworks that make Kensho's AI products fast, dependable, and easy to integrate. We value engineers who bring strong technical judgment, curiosity, and a commitment to building backend systems that enable robust, high-impact AI applications. You can read about some of our cutting-edge GenAI applications at: S&P Global and Anthropic Announce Collaboration to Bring Trusted Financial Data into Claude S&P Global Data Retrieval Agent for Gemini Enterprise | Google Cloud AI agent finder As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design and develop reliable, secure, and performant backend systems that power Kensho's AI products. You will build APIs and orchestration layers that integrate with ML systems, support complex retrieval workflows, and deliver grounded, verifiable results to customers at scale. You will work across backend systems that power Kensho's GenAI platform, Data Retrieval Agents, and the application architecture behind our established foundational AI toolkits like Kensho Link or NERD . You will collaborate closely with colleagues across Product, Machine Learning, Infrastructure, Design, and other Application engineers. You will help define architecture, enforce sound engineering practices, and ensure our AI-driven applications remain robust, maintainable, and performant. What We Are Looking For- 5+ years of direct experience developing customer-facing APIs within a team Experience developing RESTful APIs using a variety of tools Experience working across many stages of the software development lifecycle Sound reasoning about the behavior and performance of loosely-coupled systems Proficiency with algorithms (including time and space complexity analysis), data structures, and software architecture Familiarity with CI/CD practices and tools to streamline deployment processes. Experience with containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) for application deployment and orchestration. Strong understanding of distributed system concepts, concurrency, and event-driven architectures Experience building and scaling high-volume, low-latency backend services Hands-on experience with messaging, task queues, or workflow systems such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, Celery, or similar Experience deploying and operating backend systems on a major cloud platform (AWS preferred) Experience with observability tools and best practices, including metrics, tracing, and structured logging Thoughtful and efficient communication skills (both verbal and written) Experience turning abstract business requirements into concrete technical plans