Senior Backend Developer Python Jobs in Chicago, IL

Remote, US

Nametag helps companies verify the real person behind high-risk workforce actions, from account recovery to identity checks, before attackers can exploit the gap.

Deepfakes, social engineering, and stolen credentials have made "who is actually on the other side of this request?" a critical infrastructure problem. We are building the identity verification and account protection layer companies use to answer that question quickly, securely, and with less friction for real users.

We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to design and scale the systems behind Nametag's identity verification and account protection platform.

This is a backend-first role. You will own production services, APIs, database design, authentication flows, and reliability for systems where correctness and security matter. You may work across the stack when the product needs it, but the center of gravity is backend engineering.

You will work closely with product, design, and engineering leadership on a small team where senior engineers have real ownership over architecture, implementation, and production outcomes.

Backend and systems design

• Design, build, and operate backend services and APIs that power identity verification, account recovery, and account protection workflows.
• Own database schema design, migrations, query performance, and data integrity.
• Build and harden authentication, authorization, and data-protection systems.
• Design for correctness under load, including idempotency, safe retries, failure handling, and observability.
• Contribute to architecture decisions and help shape the technical roadmap.

Product engineering

• Partner with product and design to ship secure, usable customer-facing workflows.
• Build internal tools and dashboards that improve operational visibility and developer workflows.
• Make clean integration decisions across frontend, backend, third-party APIs, and customer systems.

Production ownership

• Operate what you build.
• Debug complex production issues across services, data, infrastructure, and user flows.
• Improve reliability, performance, testing, deployment, and observability.
• Review code, mentor peers, and raise the technical bar across the team.

Work authorization required: Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer without current or future need for visa sponsorship.

You do not need to match every bullet. We care most about strong backend judgment, production ownership, and security-minded engineering.

• 5+ years building and operating production backend systems.
• Strong experience with backend languages such as Node.js, Go, Python, Java, or similar.
• Experience designing APIs and services used by real customers or high-scale internal systems.
• Strong relational database experience, PostgreSQL preferred, including schema design and query optimization.
• Hands-on cloud experience, AWS preferred.
• Familiarity with authentication, authorization, identity, security, or fraud and abuse prevention.
• Comfort working across the stack when needed, ideally with React, Vue, or a similar modern frontend framework.
• Clear communication and good judgment in a remote, cross-functional team.

• Experience with identity, authentication, account recovery, fraud prevention, fintech, security, or compliance-heavy products.
• Experience with OAuth, SAML, SSO, JWTs, access control, or secure account workflows.
• Experience at an early-stage or high-ownership engineering environment.
• Strong production incident, observability, or reliability experience.

• High ownership. You see what needs doing and do it.
• Technical judgment. You make systems simpler, safer, and easier to operate.
• Speed with care. We move quickly because attackers move quickly, but we do not cut corners on trust or security.
• Kindness and integrity. Trust starts with how we work with each other.

The base salary range for this full-time position is $120,000 to $190,000, plus equity and benefits.

Nametag is a founding member of the Open Imperative and is committed to pay equity in technology. Final compensation is based on role, level, skills, experience, and education. Your recruiter or hiring manager can share more during the process.

Nametag is a remote-first team with regular in-person time to stay connected.

• Remote-first, US-based team
• Quarterly team offsites
• Flexible schedules
• Meaningful equity ownership
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits
• Flexible paid time off
• New computer hardware and equipment