Senior Python Core Engineer

Company: Chime Engineering
Location: Remote (United States)
Salary: $187,000 - $259,000 base salary (plus bonus, equity, and benefits)

About the Role

Chime Engineering is rapidly growing, and we're looking for a Senior Python Core Engineer to join the Languages & Frameworks team. You will be instrumental in standardizing and strengthening Chime’s Python ecosystem, ensuring robust, secure, and efficient engineering foundations. This role is critical as Python becomes increasingly foundational to our data engineering, analytics, machine learning, and emerging AI initiatives.

As the technical leader for Python foundations, you will own the lifecycle of Python versions, define best practices, improve build and dependency workflows, and maintain key internal Python libraries. You will partner closely with platform teams, CI/CD stakeholders, and data/ML organizations to drive improvements that make Python development faster, safer, and more scalable.

Responsibilities

• Own Chime’s Python version standards, upgrade cadence, and compliance, reducing EOL exposure and security patch lag.
• Design and drive safe, repeatable Python upgrade processes across services and shared libraries, enabling teams to adopt new versions with minimal friction.
• Establish clear dependency management practices (e.g., version locking policies, upgrade safety, library compatibility strategies).
• Partner with CI/CD stakeholders to improve build performance, reliability, and developer experience for Python projects.
• Maintain and develop critical internal Python libraries, including roadmap, quality, and adoption.
• Define and evangelize Python best practices (“the Chime way”), aligned with community standards, and support teams through documentation and enablement.
• Identify and drive opportunities to maximize returns from the Python + AI ecosystem, evaluating tools, practices, and vendor options that improve iteration speed and outcomes.
• Participate in on-call rotation, responding to incidents outside of regular working hours when necessary.

Requirements

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with deep hands-on expertise in Python in production.
• Strong experience with Python build tooling, and an understanding of tradeoffs in versioning and distribution.
• Understanding of asynchronous and synchronous data-sharing patterns (pub/sub, RPC, caching, etc.).
• Solid knowledge of containerized environments and build systems (Docker images, CI pipelines, caching, reproducible builds).
• Experience building and maintaining shared libraries used by multiple teams, including API design, backwards compatibility, and release management.
• A security- and reliability-first mindset, especially around EOL management, patching and build integrity.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills—able to influence without authority and align multiple teams around standards and migrations.
• Comfort operating with ambiguous requirements, creating clarity through docs, prototypes, and incremental rollout plans.
• Bonus: Experience working in/supporting data engineering and ML.

Compensation & Benefits

The base salary offered for this role and level of experience will begin at $187,000 and up to $259,000. Full-time employees are also eligible for a bonus, competitive equity package, and benefits. The actual base salary offered may be higher, depending on your location, skills, qualifications, and experience.