Staff Python Engineer

About Dailymotion

Dailymotion is more than a video app, it's a visual conversation on the move, built on a unique algorithm designed to develop critical thinking in users. Dailymotion brings nuance to the debates that engage young people and puts listening, discovery, and kindness at the heart of exchanges to help build a safer and more virtuous internet. Dailymotion also offers "Dailymotion Pro", a video hosting and distribution solution for professionals in all sectors; and "Dailymotion Advertising", a proprietary and powerful video marketing platform, offering a qualitative and safe environment for brands. Our team consists of 400 employees in France, New York, and Singapore, all united by the same ambition: to visibly move the lines of the global video platform ecosystem. What unites us? At Dailymotion, our team of talents from over 40 nationalities evolves daily, upholding four fundamental values:

• Open perspectives - We build bridges between people from all backgrounds. We believe in freedom of expression, inclusion, and the mixing of cultures.
• Build a safer world - We cultivate empathy, key to understanding others. Taking care of each other is our driving force to create a supportive and safe community.
• Be bold - We are ambitious challengers. We make counter-current choices that will have a visible impact on the platform ecosystem.
• Create meaning - We spark joy and curiosity, we feel good about what we do and we want everyone else to feel the same satisfaction.

The Mission

Dailymotion is undergoing a major technical transformation, migrating from a monolithic architecture to a cloud-native microservices architecture. This is one of the most structuring projects in our recent history, and we are looking for someone to lead one of the teams. As a Staff Python Engineer within our Core Platform team, you will not just be an executor. You will be the technical architect of a critical workstream: the migration of our Core Domains, which forms the foundation of our entire technological evolution. You will lead a dedicated squad, design reusable migration patterns across the organization, and make architectural decisions that will define the operation of the Dailymotion platform for years to come. This role is for someone who knows that the true value of an engineer is not measured by the lines of code written, but by the quality of architectural decisions made, the robustness of the systems designed, and the ability to elevate the technical level of an entire team. A key detail: our legacy system is in PHP, and you will need to understand it to replace it effectively. However, what we expect from you is mastery of Python: architecture, algorithms, design patterns, distributed systems. PHP is the past we are migrating; Python is the future we are building.

What you'll do

Technical Leadership

• Define and drive the technical migration strategy for our Core Domains, faithfully replicating our custom PHP framework in Python FastAPI
• Take ownership of architectural decisions to ensure a progressive and seamless migration: controlled code duplication, gradual traffic shift from the old stack to the new
• Design the necessary patterns and abstractions so that the new Python framework is functionally identical to the old one, while meeting modern standards
• Establish technical standards and best practices for decommissioning legacy systems

Squad Leadership

• Mentor and upskill a backend squad specialized in migration
• Collaborate with other squad leads to ensure coherent platform evolution
• Drive technical decision-making and solve the most complex architectural challenges
• Foster a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement

Migration & Modernization

• Recreate Dailymotion's custom PHP framework in Python FastAPI, maintaining the same data layer behind it (databases remain the same, only API layers evolve)
• Ensure functional parity between the old and new stacks: data stored in the old system must be accessible identically in the new one
• Design and execute progressive migration strategies: duplicate business logic in the new stack, controlled traffic redirection, gradual removal of the old system
• Coordinate with internal teams to minimize disruptions during migration phases
• Lead the evaluation, prioritization, and decommissioning of legacy systems

Cross-functional Collaboration

• Work closely with Product teams to understand functional needs and ensure service continuity during migration
• Collaborate with other Tech Leads to ensure overall platform consistency
• Work with DevOps and SRE teams on infrastructure transition
• Provide technical support to internal teams throughout the migration phases

Tech Stack

• Main Language: Python (asyncio, FastAPI, aioHTTP)
• APIs: GraphQL, OpenAPI, REST
• Messaging: RabbitMQ, Celery, NSQ
• Databases: MySQL, Elasticsearch, MongoDB
• Auth & Security: OAuth, JWT, RBAC, Vault
• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins
• Observability: Datadog, distributed tracing tools
• Legacy: PHP

Qualifications

The Must Haves

• Python Expertise: You have a deep mastery of Python, including architecture, algorithms, and design patterns (SOLID, DDD, hexagonal architecture...). You know how to design performant, maintainable, and scalable Python systems.
• Experience with high availability, high performance, and scalability challenges: You have designed or operated systems under heavy load and understand the implications for architectural choices, concurrency management, and optimization.
• Distributed Systems and Microservices Expertise: You understand the associated challenges: data consistency, resilience, observability, inter-service communication patterns.
• API Design Mastery: RESTful, GraphQL, backward compatibility, versioning.
• Experience with large-scale migration or modernization projects: You have led or actively participated in transforming a legacy system, ideally in a progressive migration context (strangler fig pattern or similar approach).
• Technical Leadership: You have experience mentoring teams or leading technically complex projects.
• Fluent English: essential for working in our international environment.

What we are NOT looking for: a Data Engineer or ML Engineer profile. The challenges you will face are those of a backend engineer focused on APIs and systems: performance, scalability, distributed architecture, critical service migration.

The Nice to Haves

• Knowledge of enterprise integration patterns and legacy system modernization
• Experience with API Gateway patterns and service mesh architectures
• Experience with observability and monitoring in distributed systems
• Background in technical program management or technical strategy
• Experience in change management within technical organizations

What will truly make the difference

You are not someone who waits for a roadmap to act. You identify problems before they become crises, you propose solutions before being asked, and you know how to rally a team in a technical direction by making them want to go there.

Additional Information

Work Organization

This position is open for full remote (France only) or on-site in Paris.

You don't tick all the boxes? Apply anyway. We are looking for the right person, not the perfect CV. If this role excites you but your background doesn't exactly match every criterion, we still want to meet you. Dailymotion is an equal opportunity employer. We believe in inclusion and want to welcome you to help build a more diverse community. All our positions are open to people with disabilities. Need accommodations during the recruitment process? Let us know in advance, we will adapt.

Recruitment Process

• HR Interview with Marvin (30 min): Get acquainted, discuss your motivations, and align expectations around the role.
• Technical Case Study (1h): A topic to be handled independently, followed by a presentation to two members of our tech team. This is an opportunity to showcase your thinking process and concretely understand what you'll be working on, while allowing us to assess the fit with our needs.
• Interview with Nyvath, your future manager (1h): Deep dive into the role's expectations, assessment of your technical background and problem-solving approach, situational scenarios on concrete cases.
• CTO Interview (1h): Discussion about your long-term ambitions, understanding the role's place in Dailymotion's strategy, exploring career development prospects within the organization.

Welcome to Dailymotion 🎉