Python & API Automation Engineer
£700 P/D
6 MONTH CONTRACT
LONDON/HYBRID
Role Overview
We are looking for a hands-on Python & API Automation Engineer to build and maintain automation solutions for data masking. The successful candidate will develop Python scripts that interact with REST APIs to execute masking tasks, manage end-to-end workflows, monitor job status, process outputs, and push results to a frontend.
This is a pure Python and API development role. It is not a data engineering, platform configuration, or low-code development position.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop robust, reusable Python scripts and automation solutions for data masking workflows.
- Design, build, and consume REST APIs to support automation processes.
- Implement API authentication, session management, retries, exception handling, and error recovery.
- Build ETL and pipeline processes using Python and API-based integrations.
- Trigger and orchestrate jobs programmatically through APIs.
- Monitor job execution and status, handling failures and exceptions appropriately.
- Process, transform, and validate outputs from automated workflows.
- Integrate automation results with frontend applications and downstream systems.
- Write maintainable, production-quality Python code with appropriate logging and error handling.
- Work within regulated environments and follow appropriate security, data protection, and development standards.
- Collaborate with engineering and business teams to understand masking requirements and translate them into automated solutions.
Required Skills & Experience
Must Have
- Strong hands-on Python development experience, particularly raw Python scripting and automation.
- Experience must be based on Python development rather than platform-based technologies such as ADF, Databricks, or Spark.
- Strong experience developing and integrating REST APIs.
- API development and consumption
- Authentication and authorisation
- Session management
- Retry mechanisms
- Exception and error handling
- Proven experience with ETL and pipeline development.
- Experience with workflow orchestration and automation, including:
- Triggering jobs programmatically
- Monitoring execution and status
- Handling failures and exceptions
- Processing and managing outputs
- Experience working in regulated environments, with financial services experience strongly preferred.
- Strong understanding of software engineering principles, debugging, logging, and production support.
- Nice to Have
- Experience with data masking, data anonymisation, or PII handling.
- Familiarity with Informatica IDMC.
- Experience with CI/CD practices and Git.
- Previous experience working for a Tier-1 financial institution.
- Experience integrating backend automation services with frontend applications.
