- 5+ years of professional software development experience, with a track record of building and maintaining applications in enterprise environments - not side projects or scripts, but software that real teams depend on.

- Demonstrated experience owning the full software delivery lifecycle: requirements - design - implementation - testing - deployment - maintenance.

- Strong understanding of what separates a working prototype from production-grade software: proper error handling, logging and observability, dependency management, security hygiene, upgrade paths, and documentation.

- Proficiency in at least one backend language (Python, Node.js, or similar) with genuine comfort reading and writing code at production quality - not just getting things to run.

- Experience with enterprise development tooling: CI/CD pipelines, version control workflows, containerization (Docker), infrastructure-as-code, secrets management, and environment management.

- Solid SQL skills and experience working with relational databases in production contexts.

- Ability to work productively with AI coding assistants - fluent enough to accelerate with them, experienced enough to not be misled by them.

- Strong verbal communication skills - able to engage confidently with stakeholders at all levels, articulate technical decisions clearly to non-technical audiences, and participate effectively in cross-functional discussions.

- Hands-on experience with Git-based workflows (GitHub/GitLab) and software delivery pipelines - including branching strategies, code review processes, CI/CD configuration, and release management in a team environment.