Backend Engineer – Real Estate Valuation Engine + Web Scraping

We’re building a smart wealth‑management platform for real‑estate investors (off‑plan and ready properties), based in the UAE.

Multiple backend projects are running in parallel (KPI cleanup, monthly performance snapshots, valuation). Your work will sit in the middle of these, so data quality and robustness matter a lot.

We need a skilled Backend Engineer to tackle a crucial project: building our Valuation & Data Engine. This involves two main components:

1. Optimizing Web Scraping: We have an existing web scraper on an AWS EC2 instance that gathers property data from DXBinteract.com. This site does not offer an API, making robust web scraping essential. You will audit and optimize this system for reliability, performance, and data quality, ensuring it extracts clean, structured information (prices, areas, projects, developers, etc.) to feed our analytics. You'll also implement basic logging and monitoring.

2. Developing a Rule-Based Valuation Engine (V1): You will design and implement a transparent, rule-based engine to calculate the current market value of properties. This V1 engine will use our internal property data (purchase details, location, type) combined with market indicators derived from the scraped DXBinteract data. The engine should be configurable and explainable, not a black-box ML model. It will be implemented as an AWS Lambda (or similar service), providing an API for our Bubble app and other AWS services to consume valuation results and store historical data.

Key Responsibilities
- Review, improve, and maintain our existing DXBinteract web scraper on AWS EC2, focusing on reliability, data quality, and anti-bot measures.
- Develop a deterministic, rule-based property valuation service using Python (or Node.js) on AWS Lambda.
- Ensure the valuation engine integrates seamlessly with our Bubble application and other AWS backend services, providing accurate data for our KPI and snapshot projects.
- Implement logging, monitoring, and clear configuration options for the scraper and valuation logic.

We need a Backend Engineer with strong AWS experience (EC2, Lambda, CloudWatch, IAM) and proficiency in Python (or Node.js). Crucially, you must have a proven track record in building robust web scrapers for websites without APIs, ideally in real estate or finance. Experience with designing transparent pricing/valuation models and integrating with no-code platforms like Bubble is a plus.

Deliverables (V1)
- An optimized, reliable DXBinteract scraping pipeline that delivers structured data.
- A functional, rule-based property valuation service, callable via API, that updates property values and maintains a valuation history.
- Concise technical documentation covering setup, operation, and configuration of the scraper and valuation engine.

Payment Terms (Important)
We do not accept proposals that request 100% of the budget as an upfront deposit.
We work on a milestone / “no cure, no pay” style basis: payment is released only for working, demonstrable deliverables.