Senior Backend Python Engineer (Gateway) - Relocation to Cyprus

The role is about: The Gateway Related Projects team is committed to designing, developing, and implementing payment solutions that guarantee stable and consistent payment processing. Our goal is to create successful products and establish a reputation as a dependable partner for our clients. In this role, you will work in a fast-paced environment where system performance, scalability, and 99.9% reliability are critical to our core transaction flow. Location: Cyprus — Onsite (employment contract with relocation support) Reporting to: Technical Lead What you will do: Dual-Track Engineering: Support and extend the existing Perl-based payment gateway while simultaneously designing and building high-performance microservices in Python. System Modernization: Architect and implement scalable, distributed Python services to replace legacy components, ensuring reliability under high-load production environments. High-Stakes Integrations: Integrate and manage complex third-party APIs and external payment services, ensuring seamless transaction flows and robust error handling. Technical Leadership: Lead code reviews, drive engineering best practices, and identify system bottlenecks to continuously improve performance and scalability. Architecture & Deployment: Collaborate with DevOps to improve CI/CD pipelines (GitLab) and architect solutions using AWS services (Lambda, ECS, etc.). Product-Focused Delivery: Go beyond the "how" of the code—bring a product mindset to understand the business logic, user impact, and the "why" behind every feature you build. Production Ownership: Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues in distributed systems, maintaining a "zero-downtime" mentality for our merchants. What we need: Python Mastery: 5+ years of backend engineering experience with deep Python expertise (FastAPI and AsyncIO preferred). Polyglot Mindset (Perl): Experience with Perl is a major plus, but a genuine eagerness to learn and work within Perl production code is mandatory. We value engineers who can bridge the gap between legacy and modern systems. Distributed Systems Expertise: Proven experience building and scaling microservices architectures and high-throughput systems (e.g., payments, trading, or real-time processing). API & Reliability Guru: Deep understanding of integrating third-party APIs, specifically managing webhooks, callbacks, idempotency, and retry policies. Cloud & Containers: Strong experience with Docker/Containerization and a solid grasp of AWS cloud infrastructure (Lambda, SQS/SNS, and cloud networking). Engineering over "AI Vibe Coding": We value deep engineering logic over blind AI-generated snippets. You should be an advocate for clean, intentional code who can explain the reasoning behind every line you ship. High-Load Architecture: Familiarity with event-driven architecture and messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.). Ownership & Mentorship: You have a track record of owning features fro