Python Backend Developer

EarthLab Luxembourg (https://www.earthlab.lu/) is an innovative company at the intersection of Earth observation and artificial intelligence. Our proprietary Max-ICS platform facilitates seamless Earth Observation (EO) data integration, advanced EO data processing, and continuous AI model training and orchestration, bridging the gap between raw satellite data and actionable insights.

We are looking for a Python Backend Developer to join the team building Max-ICS. This position is open to junior profiles as well as to developers with a few years of experience. What matters most to us is solid programming fundamentals, curiosity, and the motivation to grow into large-scale data and AI systems. You do not need a background in Earth Observation or in artificial intelligence: you will learn both here.

This is a hands-on development role, focused on the services and data pipelines that power Max-ICS. You will work in a small, multidisciplinary team, alongside experienced developers, DevOps and data scientists, with regular code reviews and technical guidance to support your progression.

The candidate must be eligible for EU security clearance.

What is expected from you:

• Develop and maintain backend services and APIs of the Max-ICS platform, with attention to code quality, performance and security.
• Contribute to the data pipelines that ingest, catalogue, store and process large volumes of heterogeneous satellite and geospatial data.
• Implement and improve asynchronous processing components: task queues, workers, retries, error handling and execution state tracking.
• Contribute to the orchestration layer that schedules Earth Observation processing workflows and AI agents.
• Support the industrialisation of AI and machine learning workloads together with the data science team: model packaging, serving and inference.
• Take part in the deployment and monitoring of the platform (containerisation, CI/CD, observability), alongside our DevOps practices.
• Write and maintain clear documentation for the services, APIs and data models you work on.
• Take part in code reviews, as author and as reviewer, and grow your technical skills within the team.

What you offer:

• Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• A professional experience in backend development with strong software engineering fundamentals: modular design, API design, domain modelling, concurrency and distributed-system patterns.
• Good command of Python, and practical experience with at least one web framework (FastAPI, Django or Flask). FastAPI is a plus.
• Understanding of relational databases and SQL. Experience with PostgreSQL is a plus.
• Solid software fundamentals: clean and modular code, data structures, API design basics.
• Familiarity with Git, and an understanding of why automated testing and code quality matter.
• Ability to work in English within an international team.
• Curiosity, rigour and a genuine willingness to learn: you will be asked to work on technologies you have not used before.

Nice to Have or Willin to Learn:

• Asynchronous processing and messaging systems: RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis Streams or equivalent.
• Containerisation and cloud-native deployment: Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines.
• PostGIS, S3-compatible object storage (MinIO), search and indexing technologies (OpenSearch, Elasticsearch).
• Earth Observation data and geospatial standards: Sentinel and Landsat missions, SAR data, GDAL, rasterio, xarray, STAC, OGC services, Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF and Zarr.
• AI frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, and model serving solutions.
• Agentic AI and LLM orchestration: multi-agent frameworks, tool calling, MCP, RAG, vector databases.
• Familiarity with JavaScript/TypeScript, useful for API integration with our front-end developer.
• French language.

Soft skills

• Willingness to learn: the candidate will work on technologies and on an application domain that are new to them.
• Rigour and attention to detail, in particular on reliability and security-sensitive components.
• Clear communication and ability to ask for help early in a small, multicultural team.
• Autonomy in day-to-day work, combined with acceptance of frequent code review and technical guidance.
• Collective ownership: interest in the outcome of the team, not only in individual tasks.

What we offer:

• A real learning curve: you will work on satellite data, distributed systems and AI orchestration from your first months.
• Technical guidance and systematic code reviews within a small team where your contributions are visible.
• Exposure to European institutional programmes (ESA, EDA, EU) and to defense, environmental and geospatial intelligence use cases.
• A permanent position in a growing subsidiary of the Telespazio Group.

Location:

You will be working in Luxemburg https://www.earthlab.lu/

starting date: ASAP

Please note that interviews will be held either via Teams, , other digital platforms or onsite in person.