Senior Backend Engineer

A start-up specializing in episodes-of-care benefit plans, bringing transparency and efficiency to the healthcare market through deep expertise in episode pricing and analytics. Committed to providing high-quality, affordable healthcare.

About the role

The Senior Backend Engineer will lead the design and implementation of high-scale, serverless backend services using AWS, Python, relational and NoSQL databases, and modern architectural designs. You’ll own systems end-to-end—from design, development, and testing through deployment, monitoring, and ongoing improvements—ensuring reliability, performance, and security for mission-critical healthcare workflows.

Responsibilities

• Architecture and System Design
  • Design and build large-scale, resilient, serverless systems using AWS Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, DynamoDB, Step Functions, EventBridge, and Kafka.
  • Architect durable, fault-tolerant workflows for claims processing, episode generation, eligibility updates, communication engines, and other core healthcare processes.
  • Create and evolve backend APIs for both B2C (member portal) and B2B (payer, employer, provider) integrations.
• Engineering and Implementation
  • Develop high-quality backend services in Python, following strict test-driven development (TDD) practices.
  • Build clean, well-structured codebases emphasizing maintainability, testability, reliability, and scalability.
  • Implement secure data flows and storage patterns aligned with HIPAA and healthcare compliance best practices.
• Data and Healthcare Standards
  • Work with structured and semi-structured healthcare data (e.g., eligibility, claims, and clinical data).
  • Partner with Analytics and Data Engineering to ensure data accuracy, consistency, and fidelity.
• Operational Excellence
  • Own systems end-to-end: development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
  • Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and observability dashboards.
  • Continuously improve reliability through canaries, alarms, automated rollback, and well-designed SLOs.
• Collaboration and Leadership
  • Drive cross-functional architectural discussions and propose scalable, long-term solutions.
  • Mentor and hire engineers, raising the bar for engineering culture, coding standards, and system design thinking.
  • Work closely with product to refine requirements, define technical specs, and deliver high-value features.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience, with a proven track record of shipping and operating production-grade systems.
• Expert-level proficiency in AWS serverless, including Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, Step Functions, Kafka/SQS, and event-driven architectures.
• Strong Python engineering fundamentals, including TDD, dependency injection, modular code, and clean design patterns.
• Deep understanding of high-scale system design, distributed computing, data modeling, fault tolerance, and observability.
• Experience building B2C and B2B systems that serve thousands of users and millions of transactions.
• Proficiency with PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, RDS, Kafka, caching strategies, and database schema design.
• Strong experience building scalable, public-facing RESTful APIs.
• Strong ownership mindset and a passion for delivering high-quality, reliable systems from design to production.
• Experience collaborating with SecOps, DevOps, and analytics teams, with comfort using GitHub Actions, IaC, and automated pipelines.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and cross-functional collaboration abilities.
• Bonus: Experience with healthcare EDI standards (837/834), payer systems, claims processing, HIPAA compliance, or health-tech domain work.