Backend / Integration Engineer

Location: Hybrid - Washington D.C

Department: ISL - (Project Delivery) - 101

About the Program:

Innodata's Federal Practice builds the trusted data layer for critical infrastructure Trust & Safety work. Partnering with a leading systems integrator, we're delivering a modern, governed data services platform in a secure federal (IL4) environment. Over an intensive 20-week phase, you'll help stand up a data services storefront, a DataCard governance framework, synthetic data integration, and Databricks write-back capabilities.

About this Role:

As the Backend/Integration Engineer, you'll build the connective tissue of the platform. You'll develop the data services storefront's backend, stand up ingest pipelines, and implement reliable write-back into our data lakehouse so results flow cleanly across systems. Working alongside the Solution Architect, you'll make sure the platform's components integrate securely and perform under real workloads in a federal (IL4) environment. It's a strong fit for a backend engineer who likes owning integrations and turning architecture into working plumbing.

Key Responsibilities:

• Implement Databricks REST API write-back for labeled outputs, DataCard provenance records, and synthetic content outputs
• Build and validate the Duality back-end integration: catalog intake form configuration, parameter translation to Duality generation API, async job lifecycle management (submission, tracking, retry, completion), output handling
• Implement REST integration for white-glove routing intake path
• Build and maintain storefront backend services (API layer between frontend UI and platform components)
• Implement DataCard write-back path in coordination with Solution Architect
• Design and maintain async job queue management and retry logic across all integration surfaces
• Structure output metadata for DataCard provenance records per DoD distribution statement requirements

Must-Have Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field required. Equivalent experience may substitute for degree on a 2-for-1 basis.
• 6+ years total professional experience, 4+ years backend or API integration engineering
• Python backend development — strong, production-grade
• REST API integration with async job lifecycle patterns (submission, polling, retry, webhook handling)
• Databricks REST API or strong Spark/Databricks platform familiarity
• JSON schema design and structured metadata handling
• Active Secret clearance with TS/SCI eligibility

Nice-to-Have Qualifications:

• REST API integration experience
• Federal program API integration background
• ZenML or ML orchestration pipeline familiarity
• React or modern frontend experience for storefront skeleton support

The expected hourly salary range for this position is $75 to $80 p/hour, based on experience, skills, and qualifications.

Note to Candidates: 

The Databricks write-back and Duality integration are the two highest-complexity tasks in Phase B. Candidates should be prepared to discuss async API integration patterns and their approach to retry logic and error handling in federal-data environments during the interview.