Senior Backend Engineer - Commodities

About the role

At Kpler, we are dedicated to helping our clients navigate complex markets with ease. By simplifying global trade information and providing valuable insights, we empower organisations to make informed decisions in commodities, energy, and maritime sectors.

Since our founding in 2014, we have focused on delivering top-tier intelligence through user-friendly platforms. Our team of over 850 experts from 69 countries works tirelessly to transform intricate data into actionable strategies, ensuring our clients stay ahead in a dynamic market landscape. Join us to leverage cutting-edge innovation for impactful results and experience unparalleled support on your journey to success.

About the Role

As a Senior Software Engineer on our founding Connected Supply Chain team, you will serve as a core technical owner extending Kpler’s real-time trade intelligence platform into North American inland supply chains. You will lead the design, implementation, and operation of major platform subsystems—fusing real-time pipeline sensor telemetry, rail, and waterway data with existing maritime tracking. Operating on a high-autonomy "you build it, you run it" model, your work will directly deliver a unified, production basin-to-export terminal intelligence platform to paying customers.

Key Responsibilities -

Design, build, and operate major platform components end-to-end, spanning high-throughput streaming ingestion (Kafka, Airflow, Python/FastAPI) to web applications (TypeScript/Vue).

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Lead subsystem architecture by writing design specifications, conducting peer reviews, and making pragmatic build-versus-adapt decisions.

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Guarantee production operational excellence through rigorous SLO management, comprehensive system observability, on-call rotation, and incident response.

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Architect data quality frameworks—including telemetry validation, reconciliation, and time-series monitoring—to ensure field sensor data is accurate and reliable.

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Collaborate with core marine tracking and data platform teams to seamlessly integrate inland data feeds into Kpler's broader platform architecture.

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Mentor mid-level engineers through technical design guidance, code reviews, and pair programming while setting team-wide engineering conventions.

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Partner directly with early customers (traders, analysts, operations teams) and product leaders to demo features, gather feedback, and shape product roadmaps.

Experience & Background What you'll need (Must-haves)

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5+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating distributed production systems.

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Proven experience architecting event-driven or data-intensive systems using streaming technologies like Kafka or similar message queues.

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Strong backend engineering mastery in Python and REST API design (e.g., FastAPI), alongside comfort contributing to frontend surfaces (TypeScript/Vue).