Python / AWS Engineer — Short-Term System Cleanup & Feature Completion
We’re a small team running a Python-based backend on AWS. The system is live and serving users, but we’ve accumulated some technical debt and unfinished work that we need help cleaning up. This is not a greenfield build. You’ll be stepping into an existing codebase. What’s Going On The backend is written in Python (FastAPI) Deployed using Docker on AWS (ECS + DynamoDB) Most things work, but: Deployments are brittle One background job occasionally fails silently A couple of features were started by a previous contractor and left half-done We’re not looking to rewrite everything — we want to stabilize what exists. Review the current deployment setup and suggest concrete improvements Fix the failing background job and add basic monitoring/logging Finish 1–2 incomplete backend features (we’ll define these together) Minor refactoring where it clearly improves reliability or readability We expect this to take ~1–2 weeks, depending on findings. What We Care About You can read unfamiliar code and figure out what’s going on You’re comfortable debugging production issues You can explain trade-offs and suggest pragmatic fixes You’re okay saying “this isn’t worth changing right now” What We Don’t Need Big architectural rewrites Over-engineering Long reports or slide decks Working Style Async communication A few check-ins to align on findings Clear handoff at the end so we can maintain things ourselves Apply tot his job