Backend Engineer — FarmConnect Platform

About the role

FarmConnect is building the backend infrastructure for an agritech marketplace serving smallholder farmers across East Africa. You will build the core platform APIs in Python with FastAPI, designing systems that are robust, extensible, and performant at the scale of tens of thousands of daily active farmers. Your core responsibilities: the farmer registration and profile system with farm plot geolocation using GeoJSON; the produce marketplace with listing management, order creation, escrow-based payment holding, and delivery tracking; the input marketplace with inventory management for agrodealers; the order aggregation system for cooperative bulk purchasing; the logistics integration with a motorcycle courier API; and the SACCO credit integration for input financing. You will design a PostgreSQL schema that efficiently handles geospatial queries (finding nearby aggregation points, mapping farm plots), hierarchical category structures for agricultural commodities, and double-entry ledger accounting for escrow payments. You will build webhook handlers for M-Pesa payment confirmations and delivery status updates. Experience with marketplace architectures, payment escrow systems, and geospatial data is highly desired. Experience with agricultural or supply chain systems is a strong differentiator. Python, FastAPI, and PostgreSQL proficiency is required.