Backend Software Engineer (Python)

About Us 

We are a leading global media agency, shaping the future of content, advertising, and audience engagement across platforms. Our product organization powers innovative solutions for clients worldwide, leveraging data, technology, and creativity. 

Role Overview 

As a backend software engineer, you will design, build, and deploy AI systems capabilities that drive business value and enhance our global products. You will work cross-functionally with product managers, data scientists, and engineers to design and deliver AI systems for content personalization, audience analytics, creative optimization, and more. 

Key Responsibilities 

• API System Design: Architect, develop, and test production grade Python APIs for media products. 

• Orchestration: Support data pipelines, background jobs, and distributed systems that interact with AI models. 

• Collaboration: Work with technical stakeholders to design scalable systems for easy development, deployment, and monitoring of systems. Create implementation plans teams can work against to achieve product goals. 

• Deployment & Scaling: Design and robust systems for long running processes. Databases, caching, retry logic, fall back behavior, etc. Ensure errors are routed for proper triaging 

• Robust Testing: Design/maintain high quality automated tests and manual stress/quality testing frameworks for AI systems. 

• Ethics & Compliance: Consider data governance and cyber security practices. Ensuring fairness, transparency, and compliance with regulations. 

Requirements 

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related field. 

• 2-4 years experience designing, maintaining, and testing enterprise grade RestAPIs. 

• Expert Python skills, deep experience with concurrent systems (asyncio, tornado, celery etc). 

• Demonstrated production experience complex long running processes that present and collect data 

• Experience with workflow orchestration tools (e.g., Prefect, Airflow, Dagster). 

• Experience with data persistence. Redis, Postgres, NoSQL, MongoDB, etc. 

• Demonstrated production experience with monitoring enterprise systems. 

• Ability to architect systems that are maintainable and extendable. Balancing over engineering while preparing for future requests. 

• Familiarity with LLMs – their APIs, performance challenges, and how to mitigate those (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, etc.) 

• Proficiency with version tracking 

• Knowledge of containerization, DevOps tools, and CI/CD pipelines. 

At dentsu, we believe great work happens when we’re connected. Our way of working combines flexibility with in-person collaboration to spark ideas and strengthen our teams. Employees who live within a commutable distance of one of our hub offices, currently located in Chicago, metro Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York City, are required and expected to work from the office three days per week (two days per week for employees based in Los Angeles). Dentsu may designate other Hub offices at any time. Those who live outside a commutable range may be designated as remote, depending on the role and business needs. Regardless of your work location, we expect our employees to be flexible to meet the needs of our Company and clients, which may include attendance in an office.

The annual salary range for this position is $136,000 - $190,075. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law.

Benefits available with this position include:

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance,

• Life insurance,

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance,

• 401k,

• Flexible paid time off,

• At least 15 paid holidays per year,

• Paid sick and safe leave, and

• Paid parental leave.

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies. For further details regarding Dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com.

To begin the application process, please click on the “Apply” button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps.