ATRC's Data & AI Office is a product and platform execution team - not a traditional enterprise data function. We build and operate AI-enabled systems that create measurable operational impact across the organization. Our primary output is working software in production.

What we are building - now:

• An executive reporting portal serving senior leadership, integrating live data from SAP, Microsoft 365, SuccessFactors, and internal systems across multiple operational views (finance & budget, KPIs, technology portfolio, news, wellbeing, and a personalized executive home)

• A sovereign data and AI platform: data warehouse, governed pipelines, metadata catalog, and classification enforcement across all entities

• Data mesh architecture with federated ownership - each entity owns its data products; the platform provides governed access

• Data readiness for the organization's agentic AI platform - clean, structured, governed data so AI agents can operate on trusted sources

• Operational AI agents delivering real value on top of the agentic platform (document triage, anomaly detection, automated briefings, classification automation)

• AI-enabled situational awareness and crisis management systems

• Data governance and classification - managing an active external vendor engagement, bridging framework deliverables into platform-enforced rules, and building the ongoing

  governance operations the organization requires

How we work:

• Small team, high ownership - every engineer owns a module end-to-end

• Two-week sprints with demonstrated output at every review

• Ship and improve - working systems beat perfect designs

• Core team owns all architecture and product decisions; external capacity executes within defined scope

• Decisions take hours, not weeks. Daily technical choices are made by the engineer.

• Feature scope decisions take 24 hours. Architecture pivots take 48 hours. Nothing sits in limbo.

• Oversee 5 other workstreams powered by 3rd party vendors within the ecosystem but whom we are ultimately accountable for

Owns the API architecture - every dashboard panel, every workflow, every integration runs through what you design.

Mission

You are the senior backend engineer and the architect of the API layer that all frontends, agents, and integrations depend on. You design the API contracts, the authentication flow, the workflow state machines, and the integration patterns. You build the core services yourself. Near-term: the FastAPI service powering the executive portal - all endpoints for budget data, KPIs, approvals, action tracking, and role-based access. Medium-term: the API backbone for crisis management systems, agent service endpoints, communications dispatch, and enterprise system integration contracts.

What This Role Owns

• API architecture: endpoint design, request/response contracts, versioning strategy, error standardization, OpenAPI spec generation

• Authentication and authorization: Azure AD SSO, MFA enforcement, role-based access control (executive read-only, operational read/write, admin)

• Workflow state machines: approval flows, posture transitions, action tracking - with immutable audit logging at every transition

• Session management: Redis-backed sessions, token refresh, expiry handling

• Integration design: patterns for connecting to enterprise systems at the application layer

• Agent service endpoints: backend services that AI agents call - tool endpoints, data retrieval, action execution

• Communications integration: email dispatch, messaging APIs, notification services

• Test coverage: unit tests, integration tests, and contract tests across all API endpoints

Key Decisions

• API contract - endpoint naming, schemas, HTTP status codes, error format

• Authentication flow - token lifecycle, MFA enforcement points, role hierarchy

• Workflow state transitions - what is permitted, logged, irreversible

• Rate limiting, throttling, and idempotency design

• Technology choices within the approved backend stack

Does Not Do

• Build or manage data ingestion pipelines (Data Platform Engineers)

• Write AI prompts or call LLM APIs directly (AI Engineer)

• Build frontend components (Full Stack Engineer)

• Define the database schema (Principal Data Architect)

• Define governance policies (Governance Lead)

Ideal Candidate

Has designed and built a multi-role, authenticated REST API consumed by a frontend team that understood it the next morning without a walkthrough. Owns the API contract as a product - clear naming, consistent errors, auto-generated docs. Thinks carefully about state: no unlogged transitions, no silent failures, no ambiguous 200 responses. Fast - can scaffold a working FastAPI service with auth, DB, and Redis in a day.

• 10+ years of experience with Python 3.10+ - type hints, async/await, exception handling

• FastAPI - async handlers, dependency injection, Pydantic models, middleware

• PostgreSQL - ORM (SQLAlchemy), raw query optimization, transaction management

• Azure AD - OAuth 2.0, JWT validation, MSAL, RBAC

• Redis - session store, distributed lock patterns, caching

• REST API design - versioning, error standardization, OpenAPI spec generation

• Docker + Azure App Service deployment

• GitHub Actions CI/CD

• pytest - unit and integration test coverage

• State machine design for multi-step workflows