Applications Development Engineer - Python Developer

Location: Bristol (20% onsite) Duration: 12 month contract Rate: £82.50ph UMB (Inside IR35) Role details: We are looking for an Applications Development Engineer with strong Python development expertise to support the design and delivery of high-performance software systems. This is a contract opportunity based in Bristol, with approximately 20% onsite working. Key Responsibilities: Design, build and maintain low-latency, high-throughput Python services and APIs Profile and tune application performance to meet near real-time requirements Diagnose and resolve complex issues across services, containers and Kubernetes workloads Contribute to architecture and design decisions, balancing performance, scalability and maintainability Containerise applications and manage deployments, configuration and resource tuning on Kubernetes Write unit and integration tests and contribute to CI/CD pipelines Support root-cause analysis of production incidents across code, infrastructure and distributed systems Job Requirements: Deep experience in Python development, with a track record of producing clean, maintainable and production-grade code Strong performance tuning expertise, including profiling CPU, memory and I/O, optimising latency and throughput, and tuning concurrency Understanding of concurrency models, memory management and the Global Interpreter Lock's implications for performance Solid software design skills, including the development of modular, scalable and testable systems using sound architectural patterns Experience developing near real-time systems, including event-driven or streaming architectures using technologies such as Kafka, RabbitMQ or WebSockets Experience designing and building REST and/or gRPC APIs using frameworks such as FastAPI, Flask or Django Hands-on experience with xjnqpsq Kubernetes and Docker, including deploying, scaling and debugging services in clusters Familiarity with CI/CD tooling, Git-based workflows and Agile software development practices Desirable Skills: Cloud experience across AWS, Azure or GCP, including managed Kubernetes services such as EKS, AKS or GKE Experience with performance optimisation using Cython, Rust or C extensions If you are an experienced Python Developer with expertise in performance optimisation, APIs, Kubernetes and near real-time systems, apply now to support important technology programmes within the defence and security sector