Python Software Engineer 6 Month Contract (Remote, UK)

Fully remote, UK-based £400 – £500 per day (Outside IR35)
3–6 Month Contract
Esenda powers over £1.5bn of inbound and outbound payments annually, in the education space - from tuition and catering fees to supplier payments and payroll. 
We’re a revenue-generating startup with strong product-market fit, and we’re growing fast. 
Design, build, and ship reliable backend services and APIs in Python (Flask) that power core product functionality. 
Own features end-to-end: data modelling (Postgres), API design, testing, production rollout and ongoing improvements.
Help uphold strong engineering standards through thoughtful code reviews, testing discipline, clean architecture, and pragmatic decision-making. 
Improve service reliability and operability: monitoring, alerting, logging, runbooks, and reducing on-call toil over time. 
CI/CD improvements, incremental shipping, and maintaining a high-quality codebase. 
5+ years experience building and operating production backend systems. 
~ Strong experience with Python, and hands-on use of Flask (or similar frameworks). 
~ Solid understanding of Postgres (schemas, migrations, query performance, transactions). 
~ Comfortable shipping in cloud environments—ideally AWS—and working with modern CI/CD pipelines. 
~ A strong quality mindset: you care about maintainability, security, reliability, and clear documentation.
Bonus points for  
Payments/fintech knowledge (reconciliation, idempotency, auditability, ledger concepts). 
Python, Flask 
Data: Postgres 
Cloud: AWS 
Delivery: CI/CD, automated testing, observability tooling 
Pragmatic, high-ownership teams with a bias to shipping 
Clear communication, strong collaboration, and continuous improvement 
Code reviews and sensible standards that keep quality high without slowing delivery