Software Developer - Python Developer
Introduction
A career in IBM Software means you'll be part of a team that transforms our customer's challenges into solutions.
Seeking new possibilities and always staying curious, we are a team dedicated to creating the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions for our customers. Our renowned legacy creates endless global opportunities for our IBMers, so the door is always open for those who want to grow their career.
IBM's product and technology landscape includes Research, Software, and Infrastructure. Entering this domain positions you at the heart of IBM, where growth and innovation thrive.
Your role and responsibilities
We are seeking experienced Python Developers to join the ContextForge MCP Gateway team.
ContextForge is an open-source production-grade gateway, proxy, and registry for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and A2A Agents. It federates MCP and REST services, providing unified discovery, auth, rate-limiting, observability, virtual servers, multi-transport protocols, plugins and an Admin UI: https://github.com/IBM/mcp-context-forge
As an Experienced Python Developer, you will design and implement complex features for MCP protocol, distributed systems, and AI agent orchestration. You will take ownership of significant technical components, mentor junior developers, and contribute to architectural decisions. This role requires strong expertise in distributed systems, async Python, and production service development.
Your Role And ResponsibilitiesTechnical Leadership
• Design and implement complex features: federation logic, virtual server composition, A2A orchestration
• Own significant technical components: authentication system, caching layer, protocol handlers
• Make architectural decisions for your domain areas with guidance from Engineering Manager
• Lead technical discussions and code reviews within the team
• Mentor Band 6-7 developers through pair programming and code reviews
Core Development
• Build sophisticated MCP protocol handlers: JSON-RPC, tools/prompts/resources, session management
• Design multi-tenant auth systems: OAuth2, JWT, SSO (OIDC), RBAC middleware, team isolation
• Implement distributed federation: Redis pub/sub, mDNS discovery, peer health checks, conflict resolution
• Create A2A agent integration: LangChain runtime, metrics collection, complex workflow orchestration
• Develop multi-transport protocols: SSE, WebSocket, stdio, streamable-HTTP with advanced features
• Optimize performance: caching strategies, database query optimization, async patterns
System Design & Architecture
• Design scalable systems: horizontal scaling, load balancing, failover strategies
• Implement production-ready patterns: circuit breakers, retry logic, rate limiting, backpressure
• Build observability: OpenTelemetry instrumentation, Prometheus metrics, structured logging
• Design for security: threat modeling, input validation, secrets management, RBAC enforcement
• Plan database schema: migrations, indexing strategies, query optimization
Code Quality & Excellence
• Maintain 90%+ test coverage: unit, integration, E2E, mutation testing
• Implement comprehensive error handling and recovery mechanisms
• Write technical documentation: architecture decisions, API specs, runbooks
• Establish best practices and coding standards for the team
Contribute to CI/CD improvements: test automation, deployment pipelines, quality gates
Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Master's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
Python Development (5+ years)
• Few years of software development experience in Python with strong expertise
• Deep knowledge of Python 3.11+ features: async/await, type hints, protocols, dataclasses, decorators
• Expert-level experience with FastAPI or similar async frameworks (aiohttp, Starlette)
• Strong understanding of async Python: asyncio patterns, event loops, concurrent execution
• Advanced database skills: SQLAlchemy 2.0, complex queries, migrations, performance tuning
Distributed Systems
• Experience designing and building distributed systems in production environments
• Knowledge of distributed system patterns: caching, message queues, service discovery, load balancing
• Hands-on experience with Redis: caching, pub/sub, distributed locks, rate limiting
• Understanding of consistency models, CAP theorem, eventual consistency
• Experience with multi-region deployments and data replication
API & Protocol Design
• Expert-level REST API design with OpenAPI/Swagger documentation
• Experience with JSON-RPC or similar RPC protocols
• Understanding of API versioning, backward compatibility, deprecation strategies
• Knowledge of transport protocols: HTTP/2, SSE, WebSocket, gRPC
• Experience with API gateways, proxies, or similar middleware systems
Security & Authentication
• Deep understanding of OAuth2 flows: authorization code, client credentials, refresh tokens
• Experience implementing JWT-based authentication and token validation
• Knowledge of RBAC, ABAC, and policy-based authorization systems
• Understanding of security best practices: OWASP Top 10, secure coding, threat modeling
• Experience with secrets management and encryption (at-rest and in-transit)
Production Operations
• Experience with observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, distributed tracing
• Knowledge of containerization: Docker, container networking, multi-stage builds
• Understanding of CI/CD: GitHub Actions, automated testing, deployment strategies
• Experience with production incidents: debugging, root cause analysis, post-mortems
• Proficiency with Linux environments and shell scripting
Professional Skills
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• Strong architectural thinking and system design capabilities
• Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills
• Ability to mentor junior developers and conduct thorough code reviews
• Strong written and verbal communication for technical documentation and discussions
• Self-directed with ability to lead projects from design to deployment
Preferred technical and professional experience
Advanced Python & Performance
• Experience with Python performance optimization: profiling, caching, async patterns
• Knowledge of Python internals: GIL, memory management, garbage collection
• Familiarity with Python C extensions or Rust bindings (PyO3)
• Experience with Python packaging and distribution: PyPI, wheels, source distributions
AI/ML Infrastructure
• Experience with AI infrastructure, LLM applications, or agentic systems
• Hands-on with OpenAI API, Anthropic API, LangChain, or similar frameworks
• Understanding of prompt engineering, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), or agent orchestration
• Knowledge of AI observability: token tracking, latency monitoring, cost optimization
Advanced Distributed Systems
• Experience with Kubernetes: Helm charts, operators, service meshes
• Knowledge of federation patterns: GraphQL federation, multi-cluster coordination
• Understanding of edge computing and CDN integration
• Experience with distributed tracing and correlation across microservices
Security & Compliance
• Experience with security scanning: Bandit, Trivy, Grype, SAST/DAST tools
• Knowledge of compliance frameworks: SOC2, GDPR, HIPAA, audit logging
• Understanding of zero-trust architecture and network security
• Experience with penetration testing or security audits
Open Source & Community
• Active contributions to open-source projects (GitHub profile)
• Experience with community management or developer advocacy
• Technical writing: blog posts, documentation, tutorials
• Conference presentations or technical talks
ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT
IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence-from machine learning to generative AI-to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM's AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM's hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments-a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.
YOUR LIFE @ IBM
In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.
Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.
Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.
Are you ready to be an IBMer?
ABOUT IBM
IBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.
Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.
At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.
IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.
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