Python Backend

Company: Valura.AI

Location: Chennai / GIFT City (Gandhinagar) / Remote

Duration: 3–6 months (Full-time preferred)

Stipend: Competitive (based on experience)

Full-Time Opportunity: High-performing interns will be considered for a full-time Backend Engineer role.

About Valura.AI

Valura.AI is a regulated global investing platform operating from GIFT City (IFSCA), India and the UAE.

We build the infrastructure that enables investors to invest seamlessly across borders while ensuring every transaction, holding, and reconciliation remains accurate and compliant with financial regulations.

Unlike many startups where interns build isolated projects, you'll work on production systems used by real customers and internal operations teams.

About the Role

As a Backend Engineering Intern, you'll work alongside experienced backend engineers building APIs, data pipelines, reconciliation systems, and internal tools that power our investment platform.

Financial software isn't just about writing APIs.

A transaction that's off by ₹1, a reconciliation that misses one record, or an incorrect portfolio value is a production issue.

You'll learn how large financial systems stay consistent across multiple external providers while writing production-quality Python.

Tech Stack

1. Python 3.11+
2. FastAPI
3. SQLAlchemy
4. PostgreSQL
5. Docker
6. AWS
7. Redis
8. Git & GitHub
9. REST APIs
10. TypeScript/React (for internal tooling when required)

What You'll Work On

You'll contribute directly to production systems, including:

1. Designing and building REST APIs using FastAPI.
2. Writing clean, testable Python services.
3. Working with PostgreSQL to design efficient queries and understand query performance.
4. Integrating third-party financial APIs and brokerage platforms.
5. Building reconciliation scripts that compare external data with internal records.
6. Investigating discrepancies in transactions, balances, holdings, and settlements.
7. Automating operational workflows used by Finance and Operations teams.
8. Writing unit and integration tests.
9. Participating in code reviews and engineering discussions.
10. Deploying and debugging services running on AWS.

What We're Looking For

Required

1. Strong understanding of Python.
2. Comfortable writing clean, readable, maintainable code.
3. Good understanding of SQL (JOINs, GROUP BY, indexes, query optimization).
4. Basic understanding of REST APIs.
5. Familiarity with Git.
6. Comfortable working from the terminal.
7. Good debugging and problem-solving skills.
8. Curious, detail-oriented, and willing to investigate issues rather than guess.
9. Strong communication skills and willingness to ask questions when something isn't clear.

Nice to Have

1. Experience with FastAPI, Flask, or Django.
2. Knowledge of SQLAlchemy.
3. Docker experience.
4. AWS familiarity.
5. Exposure to financial systems, investing, fintech, or accounting.
6. Open-source contributions or personal backend projects.
7. Experience consuming third-party APIs.

We Don't Care About

1. Your college.
2. Your CGPA.
3. Competitive programming ratings.
4. Previous internships.

We care far more about how you think, debug problems, and write clean, reliable software.

What You'll Learn

During the internship, you'll gain experience with:

1. Building production-grade backend services.
2. Financial data reconciliation.
3. API integrations with regulated financial systems.
4. Designing reliable data pipelines.
5. PostgreSQL performance tuning.
6. Production debugging.
7. Cloud deployment on AWS.
8. Engineering best practices including testing, code reviews, logging, and monitoring.

What You'll Get

1. Production code shipped within your first few weeks.
2. Direct mentorship from senior engineers.
3. Weekly technical feedback sessions.
4. Exposure to regulated cross-border fintech.
5. Ownership of real engineering problems.
6. Opportunity to receive a full-time Backend Engineer offer based on performance.

Hiring Process

1. Intro Call (20 minutes)

A short conversation to understand your background, interests, and why you want to work at Valura.AI.

2. Take-Home Assignment (2–3 hours)

You'll receive a dataset containing transaction records from multiple sources.

Your task is to:

1. Process the data using Python.
2. Generate the correct balances.
3. Detect inconsistencies.
4. Explain how you handled invalid or incomplete records.

We're interested in your engineering decisions, code quality, and reasoning—not just the final answer.

3. Technical Discussion (45–60 minutes)

We'll walk through your solution and discuss topics such as:

1. Python fundamentals
2. SQL
3. APIs
4. Debugging
5. Data structures
6. Code organization
7. Performance
8. System thinking

Expect a collaborative discussion rather than a rapid-fire interview.

What Makes Someone Successful Here

You're likely to enjoy working at Valura.AI if you:

1. Like solving problems whose answers aren't immediately obvious.
2. Enjoy debugging more than memorizing algorithms.
3. Care about correctness.
4. Write code that's easy for others to understand.
5. Are comfortable saying, "I don't know yet—let me investigate."
6. Want to build software that handles real money and real customers.