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. About The Team 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 About The Role As a 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- • 3+ 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 What You’ll Do • Build High-Quality Backend Systems: Design, develop, test, and maintain backend services and APIs that power Kensho’s AI applications, ensuring they are reliable, secure, and performant. • Develop Retrieval and Orchestration Services: Create APIs and services that orchestrate data retrieval workflows, integrate with ML systems, and support grounded, verifiable outputs for GenAI (LLM based) applications. • Optimize Backend Performance: Identify and resolve latency, throughput, and scalability issues across distributed systems to ensure smooth operation under high-load and real-time retrieval scenarios. • Ensure Robust Architecture: Contribute to architectural decisions, implement clean service boundaries, and build backend foundations that support both our GenAI platform and established ML toolkits like Link and NERD. • Maintain Operational Excellence: Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and instrumentation to ensure system health, observability, and rapid issue detection. • Strengthen Security and Privacy: Apply best practices for API security, authentication, authorization, and data privacy in compliance with Kensho and S&P Global standards. • Improve System Reliability: Identify technical debt, propose practical improvements, and enhance code quality, maintainability, and fault tolerance across the stack • Collaborate Across Teams: Work closely with Product, Machine Learning, Infrastructure, and Design teams to align backend capabilities with user needs and product direction. • Contribute to User Experience: Build backend components that enable smooth, intuitive, and reliable user experiences in customer-facing applications. • Prototype and Experiment: Validate new ideas through prototypes, instrumentation, and data-driven experimentation to support innovation and rapid iteration. Technology You'll Encounter: • Python, Flask, FastAPI, Django REST Framework • PostgreSQL, Celery, RabbitMQ, Redis, Kafka, OpenSearch • AWS, Docker & other orchestration tools, Sentry, Prometheus • Git, Jenkins, Github Actions, Jsonnet • Terraform, Grafana What’s In It For You? Our Mission: Advancing Essential Intelligence. Our People: We're more than 35,000 strong worldwide—so we're able to understand nuances while having a broad perspective. Our team is driven by curiosity and a shared belief that Essential Intelligence can help build a more prosperous future for us all.From finding new ways to measure sustainability to analyzing energy transition across the supply chain to building workflow solutions that make it easy to tap into insight and apply it. We are changing the way people see things and empowering them to make an impact on the world we live in. We’re committed to a more equitable future and to helping our customers find new, sustainable ways of doing business. Join us and help create the critical insights that truly make a difference. Our Values: Integrity, Discovery, Partnership Throughout our history, the world's leading organizations have relied on us for the Essential Intelligence they need to make confident decisions about the road ahead. We start with a foundation of integrity in all we do, bring a spirit of discovery to our work, and collaborate in close partnership with each other and our customers to achieve shared goals. Benefits: We take care of you, so you can take care of business. We care about our people. That’s why we provide everything you—and your career—need to thrive at S&P Global. Our benefits include: • Health & Wellness: Health care coverage designed for the mind and body. • Flexible Downtime: Generous time off helps keep you energized for your time on. • Continuous Learning: Access a wealth of