russell.ballestrini.net/content/pages/cover-letters/2026-01-27-skycatchfire-senior-python-backend-developer-russell-ballestrini.rst

Russell Ballestrini
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**Senior Python Backend Developer | SKYCATCHFIRE**

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russell@unturf.com | `russell.ballestrini.net <https://russell.ballestrini.net>`_ | `GitHub <https://github.com/russellballestrini>`_

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To the SKYCATCHFIRE team:

Transforming complex business processes into elegant data models & APIs. That's the sentence in your listing that got me. It's also the thread that runs through my entire career. I've spent 15+ years building production systems in Pyramid, FastAPI, & Flask. I've designed APIs that serve 30M users at Remind, processed crypto payments across 4 blockchain networks at Make Post Sell, & built unsandbox.com, a multi-tenant code execution PaaS in Elixir. I prioritize long-term reliability & clarity over quick fixes because I've maintained the codebases that didn't.

Turning messy business logic into clean schemas is the work I enjoy most. At Make Post Sell, I modeled the full e-commerce lifecycle: product catalogs, cart management, order processing, payment confirmation across multiple cryptocurrency chains, & automated fulfillment. At Remarkbox, I designed the data model for an embeddable comment system handling nested threads, moderation workflows, & multi-site tenancy. PostgreSQL is my primary database. Schema design, query optimization, migrations, indexing strategies. I've managed databases at scale serving 30M users & designed schemas from scratch for greenfield products.

I actively use AI tools in my development workflow. I've built AI-powered features at Coursemojo for education content generation & integrate LLMs into my current projects. I also built uncloseai-speech, a real-time speech API in FastAPI handling concurrent audio workloads. I understand both the integration patterns & the infrastructure requirements for making AI features reliable in production.

I build things end-to-end, from data model to deployment. Remarkbox, Make Post Sell, unsandbox.com. I'd love to talk about what you're building & how my backend experience can help.

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Russell Ballestrini