Software Development Engineer III | Backend

This is a senior IC role with significant architectural ownership and technical leadership expectations. A Seasoned SDE3 / Tech Lead at SpotDraft is expected to own and evolve critical systems end-to-end, influence technical direction across teams, and drive high-quality engineering decisions at a platform level. Beyond building systems, you will shape architecture, mentor engineers, and partner with leadership to guide long-term technical strategy. The role works closely with Engineering Leaders on system evolution and key technical decisions.

Requirements:

• 7-10 years of backend development experience in product environments.

• Strong Backend fundamentals (Python, Django/Flask experience is a plus).

• Proven experience designing and evolving multiple distributed or high-scale systems in production.

• Strong system design fundamentals with the ability to drive HLD + LLD independently.

• Demonstrated experience owning systems across multiple iterations (build, scale optimize evolve).

• Ability to reason deeply about performance, reliability, cost, and maintainability trade-offs.

• Experience in influencing cross-team technical decisions and architecture.

• Comfort working directly with stakeholders and driving alignment across functions.

Responsibilities:

• Designing and evolving scalable backend systems (HLD + LLD) with clear trade-off articulation.

• Driving architecture decisions across services and influencing platform direction.

• Building and evolving APIs that power core product and platform workflows.

• Identifying opportunities for platform abstraction and reusable frameworks.

• Owning services/modules end-to-end across their lifecycle, including long-term scalability and stability.

• Proactively identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks and system limitations.

• Leading and contributing to design reviews with a strong focus on long-term architecture.

• Mentoring engineers and raising the quality bar for system design and code.

• Driving technical debt reduction and platform simplification initiatives.

• Partnering with Staff/Principal Engineers on complex system design and architectural direction.

• Using AI tools pragmatically to improve engineering quality and velocity.

• Ensuring systems are scalable, secure, reliable, and maintainable at scale.

Why SpotDraft?

• Brilliant teammates—Work with some of the sharpest minds in legal tech.