Lead hands-on development of robust, scalable, and secure RESTful and event-driven APIs using FastAPI and OpenAPI 3.0+. Own backend architecture and technical execution, serving as a primary contributor to the codebase. Establish and enforce best practices for API design, versioning, documentation, and maintainability. Design and build modular, extensible backend systems integrating multiple services, databases, and third-party clients. Develop high-performance, low-latency APIs using async/await patterns, FastAPI, Pydantic, and SQLAlchemy. Build reusable microservices, internal libraries, and backend components to support a distributed architecture. Engineer for scale using asynchronous processing and task queues (Celery, RabbitMQ, Kafka). Design and implement integrations with relational (PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (Redis) data stores. Build cloud-native backend services leveraging containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes). Implement authentication, authorization, and security best practices (OAuth2, JWT), ensuring compliance with industry standards. Collaborate closely with product managers, frontend engineers, and QA teams to deliver high-impact features. Mentor backend engineers through code reviews, technical guidance, and best-practice enforcement. Own the full backend lifecycle from design and development through deployment, monitoring, and optimization.