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.

- Expand your network—Interact with top founders, investors, and industry leaders.

- Real impact—Take ownership of projects and see your work in action.

- Big goals, bold moves—We trust you to deliver, innovate, and push boundaries.  

Our Core Values

- Our business is to delight Customers

- Be Transparent. Be Direct

- Be Audacious

- Outcomes over everything else

- Elevate each other

- Be Passionate. Take Ownership.

- Be 1% better every day.