Python Engineer, Financial Data Platform & Integrations

**About Cardiff** ----------------- Cardiff lends to small businesses. Since 2004 we've funded more than $12 billion across the country, to businesses in logistics, healthcare, construction, professional services, and plenty in between. We're building our own underwriting technology, and we still answer the phone; our customers need capital fast, and they want a straight answer from a person who can actually help. **Location:** Remote (U.S. preferred), with East Coast hours overlap **Employment Type:** Contractor (ongoing), with a path to full\-time employment **Department:** Engineering **About Cardiff** ----------------- Cardiff lends to small businesses. Since 2004 we've funded more than $12 billion across the country, to businesses in logistics, healthcare, construction, professional services, and plenty in between. We're building our own underwriting technology, and we still answer the phone; our customers need capital fast, and they want a straight answer from a person who can actually help. **Why This Role Matters** ------------------------- Cardiff's underwriting decisions are only as good as the data behind them. This role owns that layer: the integrations that pull credit and bank transaction data from providers like Experian and Plaid, and the Python services that deliver it to the systems driving risk decisions. We're pushing funding turnaround from 24 business hours toward minutes, and that only works if the data underneath is fast, reliable, and compliant. As we expand ML\-based decisioning and LLM\-based workflows, this layer sets the pace for everything built on top of it. **The Role** ------------ This is a Python backend engineering role focused on financial data integration. You'll build and maintain the FastAPI services that deliver financial and credit data to Cardiff's internal systems, along with the provider integrations and AWS pipelines that feed them. You'll work as an individual contributor on Cardiff's technology team, alongside the Lead AI Architect and engineers covering full\-stack, UI, and operations, with access to our AI platform from day one and real ownership over how you get the work done. The role starts as an ongoing contract with a clear path to full\-time; we begin with a contract so both sides can evaluate fit through real work, and your scope will grow as you show you can carry more. **What Success Looks Like** --------------------------- In your first 90 days, you will: * Ship at least one production integration with a financial or credit data provider (Experian, Plaid, or a bank transaction source) end to end * Implement automated validation and quality checks across the pipelines you own, so failures surface before they reach downstream consumers * Ship or materially extend a FastAPI service that exposes provider data internally, with tests and documentation another engineer can pick up cold * Deliver a documented data model and schema mapping for at least one provider domain,