The Senior Backend Engineer will lead client projects, build AI solutions, and develop technical standards while mentoring junior engineers.
Title: Senior Backend Engineer
Start Date: ASAP
Location: Primarily remote (optional hybrid in NYC or Chicago)
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Areté Capital Partners is a boutique, special-situation advisory firm that provides independent fiduciary and stewardship services to companies experiencing significant growth pains, complex organizational change, or existential crisis. Our scope of work includes serving as Board Members, Interim C-Suite Management, Chief Restructuring Officer, and other operationally focused roles, where AI-driven tools and analytics play a pivotal role in optimizing turnarounds and mitigating risks. The Areté team combines decades of professional experience across a multitude of sectors and situations, advising businesses during periods of distress and transition.
OPPORTUNITY
As an early member of Areté’s newly formed Data & AI team, you will work closely with the Team Lead to build the function from the ground up and scale our client project delivery.
Our Data and AI strategy has three pillars: People (internal transformation), Projects (client solution delivery), and Product (SaaS development). You'll primarily focus on the Projects pillar—leading client engagements that solve real business problems through data science and AI—while contributing to our product roadmap by abstracting reusable components from client work.
You'll work on high-impact projects across the portfolio of Areté clients. Some projects include SKU rationalization, inventory optimization for retail and CPG clients, and price optimization for entertainment industry leaders. This remote-first role offers significant autonomy, direct client interaction, and the chance to shape both our technical direction and team culture as we grow.
RESPONSIBILITIES
The Senior Backend Engineer (Data/AI) plays a vital role in delivering transformative data and AI solutions to our clients. Your involvement in initiatives will include, but are not limited to:
Client Project Delivery (70%)
Product Development & Technical Assets (20%)
Team Development & Collaboration (10%)
Required:
Nice to Have:
Start Date: ASAP
Location: Primarily remote (optional hybrid in NYC or Chicago)
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Areté Capital Partners is a boutique, special-situation advisory firm that provides independent fiduciary and stewardship services to companies experiencing significant growth pains, complex organizational change, or existential crisis. Our scope of work includes serving as Board Members, Interim C-Suite Management, Chief Restructuring Officer, and other operationally focused roles, where AI-driven tools and analytics play a pivotal role in optimizing turnarounds and mitigating risks. The Areté team combines decades of professional experience across a multitude of sectors and situations, advising businesses during periods of distress and transition.
OPPORTUNITY
As an early member of Areté’s newly formed Data & AI team, you will work closely with the Team Lead to build the function from the ground up and scale our client project delivery.
Our Data and AI strategy has three pillars: People (internal transformation), Projects (client solution delivery), and Product (SaaS development). You'll primarily focus on the Projects pillar—leading client engagements that solve real business problems through data science and AI—while contributing to our product roadmap by abstracting reusable components from client work.
You'll work on high-impact projects across the portfolio of Areté clients. Some projects include SKU rationalization, inventory optimization for retail and CPG clients, and price optimization for entertainment industry leaders. This remote-first role offers significant autonomy, direct client interaction, and the chance to shape both our technical direction and team culture as we grow.
RESPONSIBILITIES
The Senior Backend Engineer (Data/AI) plays a vital role in delivering transformative data and AI solutions to our clients. Your involvement in initiatives will include, but are not limited to:
Client Project Delivery (70%)
- Lead client projects from discovery through production deployment, owning the full technical lifecycle
- Interface directly with clients to understand business challenges and translate them into technical solutions
- Work directly with Areté’s consultants to bring technology to automate and optimize their process and work together to deliver client outcomes
- Design and build production-ready data science and AI solutions using Python, modern ML frameworks, and agentic AI (Pydantic AI)
- Travel to client sites (up to 40%) for onboarding, discovery workshops, and strategic engagements
- Ensure solutions deliver measurable business value and meet success criteria established during discovery
Product Development & Technical Assets (20%)
- Abstract reusable components and patterns from client work into our SaaS product platform
- Build and maintain scalable, modular codebases that can be deployed across multiple clients
- Develop data pipelines, ML models, and AI agents that become core product features
- Establish technical standards, best practices, and documentation for the growing team
- Contribute to architecture decisions and technical strategy for the Data & AI business unit
Team Development & Collaboration (10%)
- Work closely with the Data Team Lead in a highly collaborative, remote-first environment
- Eventually mentor and manage junior engineers as the team scales
- Participate in technical decision-making and help shape the team's culture and processes
- Contribute to internal knowledge sharing and technical documentation
Required:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Economics, Data Science, or related field
- 5+ years of professional experience with Python in production environments
- Proven track record of deploying AI/ML models to production and solving real business problems
- Strong proficiency with the PyData stack: pandas/polars, scikit-learn, matplotlib
- Solid SQL skills for data querying and manipulation
- Experience with agentic AI frameworks (Pydantic AI preferred, or similar)
- Proficiency with Jupyter or Marimo notebooks for exploratory analysis and prototyping
- Strong GitHub skills and collaborative development practices
- Client-facing experience is non-negotiable – you must be comfortable presenting to and advising clients
- Practical, hands-on experience (not just academic or theoretical background)
- Willingness to travel
Nice to Have:
- Consulting or professional services background
- Startup experience (ideally a mix of both consulting and startup environments)
- Frontend or full-stack development skills for added versatility
- Experience with dbt for data transformation workflows
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Experience in retail, CPG, or entertainment/events industries
- Knowledge of additional ML frameworks (LangChain, TensorFlow, PyTorch)
Similar Jobs
Insurance
The Senior Backend Engineer will design, build, and maintain backend services and technologies for Openly's insurance platform, focusing on API development and system integration while providing mentorship and collaborating on architecture decisions.
Top Skills:
BigQueryCircleCICloud FunctionsComposer/AirflowDatadogDockerGCPGoKubernetesPostgresPythonSQLTerraform
HR Tech • Information Technology • Professional Services • Sales • Software
The Senior Backend Engineer will develop the Payroll product, overseeing the entire development cycle from design to deployment, in a microservices architecture.
Top Skills:
AWSJavaKotlinMySQLPostgresScala
Information Technology
As a Senior Backend Engineer at DuckDuckGo, you'll lead backend projects, mentor engineers, and develop AI-enhanced features for the company's privacy-centric product line.
Top Skills:
Ai ToolingGoNode.jsPerlRag Pipelines
What you need to know about the Chicago Tech Scene
With vibrant neighborhoods, great food and more affordable housing than either coast, Chicago might be the most liveable major tech hub. It is the birthplace of modern commodities and futures trading, a national hub for logistics and commerce, and home to the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association. This diverse blend of industry influences has helped Chicago emerge as a major player in verticals like fintech, biotechnology, legal tech, e-commerce and logistics technology. It’s also a major hiring center for tech companies on both coasts.
Key Facts About Chicago Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 245,800; 5.2% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: McDonald’s, John Deere, Boeing, Morningstar
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, fintech, software, logistics technology
- Funding Landscape: $2.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Arch Venture Partners, MATH Venture Partners, Jump Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
