Senior Software Engineer (Python, GenAI)

Please note: for this role, you must be based in Malta, Bulgaria, or Portugal.
The creative mind behind every project.  Put your skills to the test to build solutions that continue to shape the world we live in.  

About Us
Ascent has recently been acquired by Acuity Analytics.  This is both a significant milestone for us and a tremendous opportunity for you.  Acuity Analytics is a business with a strong global reputation, an impressive client base and ambitious growth plans.  We deliver deep insights and domain-led digital transformation to high-growth and heavily regulated organisations.  To our customers, we bring a partnership that provides the talent, technology and capability to enhance performance and operational efficiency. 
About the role  
You will build and operate a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) backend platform that enables secure search and AI-powered Q&A across enterprise email and document data.
The platform runs on AKS and integrates Azure AI Search, LLM services, and a FastAPI backend to deliver grounded answers with traceable citations to an Angular frontend.
You will work closely with data engineers, data scientists, and frontend engineers to design scalable APIs, optimize retrieval performance, and ensure secure access to indexed content.
Your daily responsibilities as a Backend Engineer will be

• Design and build FastAPI services powering search and AI Q&A functionality.
• Implement hybrid retrieval (semantic + keyword) using Azure AI Search.
• Integrate LLM services to generate grounded responses from retrieved document chunks.
• Return structured API responses including answers, citations, snippets, and diagnostics.
• Collaborate with frontend engineers to support filter-based search and citation navigation.
• Implement Entra ID authentication and group-based authorization for secure document access.
• Deploy and operate services on AKS using Docker and Kubernetes.
• Implement logging, metrics, and tracing for system observability.
• Work with data engineers to align chunk schemas, embedding models, and index updates.
• Monitor index freshness, search performance, and system reliability.
• Required Skills and Experience
• The following skills/experience are necessary:
• 5+ years of backend engineering experience building production systems.
• Strong Python experience with FastAPI or similar frameworks.
• Experience building REST APIs and microservices.
• Experience with vector search or hybrid retrieval systems (Azure AI Search or similar).
• Experience integrating LLMs into production applications (RAG or similar patterns).
• Knowledge of authentication and authorization patterns (OAuth2, OIDC, Entra ID).
• Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience working with Azure cloud services.
• Strong understanding of software design principles and scalable architectures.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and Git-based workflows.
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills.

Advantageous experience

• Experience implementing ACL-aware search or security trimming.
• Experience with document processing pipelines or document intelligence tools.
• Experience building citation-based or evidence-grounded AI systems.
• Experience with OpenTelemetry, Application Insights, or similar observability tools.
• Experience with Helm, Kustomize, or infrastructure-as-code for Kubernetes deployments.
• Experience evaluating or tuning search relevance and retrieval quality

Why join us

People are at the Heart of our Business.  By investing in people, we achieve exceptional results for our clients and create new opportunities for our teams to thrive.  Check out this page for more details.