Python Developer

Senior / Staff Software Engineer (Python/C++ Backend + Windows/Excel COM Automation)

Location

USA (Remote)

Employment Type

Full-Time

Experience Level

Senior / Staff (8–14 years)

Role Overview

We are seeking a highly skilled Senior/Staff Software Engineer with deep expertise in Python and C++ backend development, combined with specialized experience in automating Microsoft Excel desktop applications and COM/VSTO add-ins in production environments.

In this role, you will help build a server-side Excel execution platform for a Fortune 500 financial services client. The platform programmatically opens macro-intensive, add-in-dependent valuation workbooks on Windows, enables proprietary and third-party add-ins (such as Capital IQ) to execute calculations, captures outputs, and safely versions results back to cloud storage.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on engineer who can own backend services, integrations, and reliability engineering end-to-end, and who has practical experience transforming complex Excel + COM automation workflows into dependable, scalable systems.

Key Responsibilities

Backend Engineering & Platform Development

• Design, develop, and operate production-grade backend services using Python, ensuring code quality, maintainability, observability, and test coverage.
• Build reusable components, APIs, and integrations across storage systems, queues, and cloud infrastructure.
• Contribute across the stack, including system integration, debugging, and performance optimization in both legacy and modern environments.

Excel Execution Engine Ownership

• Design and maintain a server-side Excel execution engine capable of:
• Opening macro-heavy workbooks programmatically.
• Resolving and loading Excel add-ins.
• Executing approved actions and calculations.
• Capturing structured outputs with complete provenance.
• Preserve add-in behavior by running workloads in isolated, interactive Windows desktop sessions required by COM-based add-ins.
• Ensure clean separation between workbook execution sessions.

Reliability & Orchestration

• Build and operate worker pools that distribute workbook executions across multiple Excel workers.
• Implement scheduling, queue management, retries, idempotency, and automated failure recovery.
• Detect and recover from hangs, crashes, dialog interruptions, and other Office automation failures.
• Validate outputs by verifying:
• Expected worksheets and values.
• Absence of error states.
• Data integrity and hash checks.

Performance & Capacity Engineering

• Design systems to handle large workbook volumes within critical monthly-close windows.
• Analyze throughput bottlenecks and optimize concurrency limits.
• Conduct load, stress, and soak testing to ensure scalability and reliability.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate with solution architects to define system boundaries and architecture.
• Partner with DevOps teams on Windows VM imaging, deployment, scaling, and operational readiness.
• Produce technical documentation and facilitate knowledge transfer.

Required Qualifications

Experience

• 8–14 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong track record of building and operating complex production backend services and APIs.
• Demonstrated ownership of systems from design through production support.

Core Technical Skills

• Strong proficiency in Python and solid experience with C++.
• Deep understanding of:
• Concurrency and multithreading.
• Data structures and algorithms.
• Debugging and performance optimization.
• Distributed systems and backend architecture.
• Experience working with storage systems, messaging queues, cloud platforms, and CI/CD pipelines.

Excel & COM Automation Expertise

• Extensive hands-on experience automating Microsoft Excel through COM, Office Interop, or VSTO.
• Experience designing interactive desktop-session architectures to run Microsoft Office workloads unattended on Windows servers.
• Proven ability to automate:
• Macro-heavy Excel workbooks.
• Third-party Office/COM add-ins.
• Workbook recalculation workflows.
• Add-in authentication and licensing processes.

Reliability Engineering

• Demonstrated success in making inherently fragile desktop automation stacks reliable and scalable through:
• Crash and hang detection.
• Session recovery.
• Dialog handling.
• Output validation.
• Capacity and throughput engineering.

We Are Looking for Engineers Who

• Build enterprise-grade backen…