Backend Developer (Python) — Own systems that matter Raqi is a small team building data

Backend Developer (Python) — Own systems that matter

Raqi is a small team building data infrastructure for the Middle East. We crawl and process millions of posts, power AI assistants that understand Iraqi Arabic, and serve classified listings to thousands of daily users.

We’re hiring a Backend Developer who can move confidently from code to production: debug a Sentry error during an incident, tune an Elasticsearch query that’s timing out, and ship improvements continuously.

What you’ll do (end‑to‑end ownership):

Debug crawler rate limits; implement smarter proxy rotation/session handling

Add ranking signals to search; validate performance under real traffic

Build async endpoints for video/image/message processing via LLM APIs

Investigate Redis memory spikes; fix caching & eviction

Deploy/tune Celery workers; track throughput/latency

Trace production issues across services (logs, metrics, correlation)

We don’t have separate “backend” and “infra” teams. If you write it, you own it in production.

Tech stack:

Python 3.11+, Django/DRF, Celery, asyncio, Django Channels, aiohttp

PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Kafka, WebSockets

OpenAI/Gemini/WhatsApp/Telegram APIs

Docker, Cloudflare, AWS (EC2/S3/IAM), Metabase, Sentry

Non‑negotiable:

1+ years building Python backends (Django preferred)

Proven production debugging in distributed systems

Comfortable in Linux terminal (logs, processes, networking, SSH)

Solid SQL + query optimization

Maintainable code, tests where it matters

Hands‑on AI APIs & tools (auth, rate limits, monitoring, reliability)

Professional working English (written + meetings)

Strong plus:

Celery at scale, Kafka ops, ES/OpenSearch tuning, large‑scale scraping, AWS/Docker networking, LLM structured extraction

Rare but valued:

Kurdish (especially Iraqi Kurdish), Python crawlers

Not a fit if you want:

Ticket‑only work with no ops ownership

CRUD all day with no system responsibility

Waiting for perfect docs before moving

How to apply:

Email contact@raqi.app with:

CV or LinkedIn

One short paragraph: hardest backend/infra problem you solved and how

(Optional) GitHub / open‑source / technical writing

Full doc: https://raqi.short.gy/hireme

If you’ve done 80% of this — apply.