About Ascend
Ascend (formerly FlyFlat) is a membership-based travel concierge service that delivers 24/7 end-to-end journey management for frequent travelers and corporate teams. Members save an average of 35% on business and first-class flights and reclaim hours of planning time, communicating directly with a dedicated human concierge team via WhatsApp to book flights, hotels, and ground transport, with proactive disruption management throughout the journey.
The combination of white-glove service and proprietary technology is what makes the model work—and that's where this role sits. We're scaling the platform, the team, and the surface area of what a small engineering org can credibly own, including how AI-assisted development reshapes that ceiling.
The Role
As a Senior Python Backend Developer at Ascend, you'll lead development of our Python-based web applications using Django and FastAPI. You'll architect scalable solutions, implement best practices, and help shape our technical direction while working with modern cloud infrastructure.
Beyond traditional engineering, you'll play a meaningful role in how Ascend adopts AI-assisted development—both inside Engineering and in the tooling, standards, and guardrails we extend to the rest of the organization. We expect AI to be a first-class part of how our team ships, reviews, and operates, and we want someone who has opinions on what that should look like.
Who You Are
You're an experienced developer with deep Python expertise and a passion for building high-performance web applications. You combine technical excellence with pragmatic problem-solving and enjoy the challenges of a growing company. You're also fluent in modern AI-augmented development: you know when to reach for AI tools, where they fall short, and how to build the structures (prompts, skills, review processes, evaluation harnesses, access controls) that let a team use them productively and safely.
What You'll Do
- Lead development of features using Django and FastAPI
- Architect and implement scalable web applications
- Establish technical standards for our Python codebase, including standards for AI-assisted contributions
- Optimize our cloud infrastructure (Railway, with selective AWS usage)
- Build and maintain the AI tooling, prompts, and skills the engineering team relies on day-to-day, and treat that work as a real engineering deliverable rather than a side project
- Help define the company-wide policies, guardrails, and enablement that let teams across Ascend use AI tools effectively without creating IP, security, or data-handling risk
- Mentor developers, conduct thorough code reviews, and help raise the bar for how we evaluate AI-assisted work
- Collaborate with product managers and designers
- Implement testing and evaluation strategies, including for workflows that involve AI in the loop
- Evaluate new technologies, AI and otherwise, to enhance our tech stack