Senior Python Engineer

Meet Slingshot

At Slingshot Aerospace,we'reon a mission to make space safer and more securefor everyone. Our work directlyimpactsglobal security, disaster response, climate monitoring, and the critical infrastructure that connects our world.We'rea team of builders, thinkers, and problem-solvers who believe that the next generation of space operations will be powered by better data and smarter software. We move fast,we'renot afraid to fail, and we believe the best ideas can come from anywhere-whetheryou'rein engineering, sales, product, or operations. If you want to work on something that truly matters, with people who care deeply about the impactwe'remaking and help shape the future of an industrythat'sjust getting started,you'rein the right place.

What You'll Be Launching

Hiring for two Senior Python Engineers to help architect and build secure, scalable, high-performance data processing and intelligent application platforms in the Washington DC-Baltimore area. Work is mostly done remotely but regular site visits in the DC area are required.

Requires deep expertise in Python, FastAPI, distributed event-driven systems, MongoDB, and in-memory data technologies such as Redis. The engineer will play a key role in system architecture, development of production-grade services and pipelines, and implementation of best practices across data ingestion, transformation, streaming, AI integration, and secure software delivery. Experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems and Agentic AI workflows is highly desirable.

This team is actively re-platforming a mission-critical production data pipeline from a legacy first-generation architecture into a modern, cloud-native, event-driven platform. These are newly created positions-not backfills-established specifically to expand the engineering team responsible for designing and building the next-generation system alongside an experienced group of senior engineers and architects.

This is a highly hands-on engineering role within a small, senior-level team focused on re-architecting a high-throughput, mission-critical data platform. Engineers will work across several high-impact initiatives, including replacing tightly coupled synchronous processing patterns with asynchronous, event-driven microservices and defining the service boundaries, repository structure, and engineering standards that will support the platform long term. This is a true greenfield modernization effort.

Candidates joining at this stage will have direct influence over architecture decisions, service ownership, development standards, and platform strategy. The environment combines modern cloud-native technologies with a serious compliance and security posture, including AWS GovCloud, FastAPI-based Python services, managed AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes with KEDA autoscaling, and Datadog observability. Engineers looking to work at the intersection of advanced distributed systems, cloud-native engineering, and government-grade security will find a strong fit in this opportunity.

Your Mission (Should you choose to accept it)

• Develop Python-based ETL frameworks, orchestration layers, and high-throughput data pipelines.
• Implement and optimize real-time, event-driven streaming architectures using Kafka and/or RabbitMQ.
• Build and scale FastAPI microservices with strong focus on performance, resilience, security, and observability.
• Design MongoDB schemas, indexing strategies, and aggregation pipelines with attention to performance.
• Implement caching layers, session management, and high-speed data access using Redis or similar in-memory stores.
• Contribute to the design and implementation of RAG pipelines, vector search integrations, and retrieval optimization.
• Implement Agentic AI workflows using LangChain and Crew AI.
• Apply Secure SDLC practices across coding, code review, CI/CD, and deployment.
• Participate in architecture reviews and contribute to engineering standards for distributed systems.
• Troubleshoot complex data, system, and performance issues in production environments.
• Support containerization, Kubernetes-native deployment patterns, and AWS cloud integrations.

Pre-flight Checklist

• Expert-level Python experience across ETL, microservices, and distributed data processing.
• Strong FastAPI development and optimization experience.
• Production experience with Kafka and/or RabbitMQ.
• Strong MongoDB expertise: schema design, indexing, aggregation, sharding/replication.
• Experience with in-memory databases such as Redis.
• Hands-on experience implementing vector search or RAG-based retrieval pipelines.
• Experience with agent-driven AI architectures and LLM-powered automation workflows.
• Strong Linux proficiency and experience with Docker/Kubernetes.
• Demonstrated ability to debug complex distributed or high-scale systems.
• Hands-on AWS experience across compute, networking, and data services.
• Proven application of Secure SDLC and secure engineering patterns.
• Bachelor's or advanced degree in CS, Engineering, or related field.

Strong preference for candidates with Active Top Security Clearance with SCI Eligibility

Location: Washington DC Metro Area

Salary: $150,000 - $220,000, equity and benefits

US-based Candidates: we are currently only able to hire residents of the following U.S. states: AL, AZ, CA, CO, DC, FL, GA, HI, IL, IN, KS, MA, MD, MI, MN, MO, MT, NC, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, RI, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI, WV We are unable to consider candidates residing in other U.S. states at this time.

Internationally-based Candidates: we are currently only able to hire residents of the following locations: United Kingdom. We are unable to consider candidates residing in other countries at this time.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion are key to our success. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and our employees are people with different strengths, experiences, and backgrounds, who share a passion for creating a safer, more connected world. Diversity not only includes race and gender identity, but also national origin, citizenship, sex, color, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic that is part of one's identity. All of our employees' points of view are key to our success, and we embrace individuality.