Senior Python Engineer (Backend)

Alaffia is a venture-backed Series B healthtech startup based in NYC. We’re building a new kind of claims operations partner for health plans, using expert clinicians and transparent AI to cut wasted spending and deliver consistently better outcomes across the entire lifecycle of claims.

About the Role

Alaffia Health is a healthcare AI startup revolutionizing medical billing and data automation. As a Senior Python Backend Engineer, you will build cutting-edge AI products, drive innovation, and shape the future of healthcare automation. You will lead the effort to scale our GenAI applications, build the GenAI framework for the engineering team, and tackle challenging problems in web development, system design, and cloud infrastructure.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with fullstack, data, devops, and AI engineers, as well as product and business teams, to craft a feature-rich GenAI-powered agentic workflow framework.
• Design, develop, and deploy data-intensive applications with Python in a production environment.
• Develop test suites and work with CI/CD tooling for automation.
• Utilize and improve observability practices, including logging and user activity metrics, integrated with Datadog and other tools.

Requirements

• 7+ years of industry experience with large-scale and production-level API development and backend data processing.
• Hands-on experience with relational databases and data model design.
• Experience building and deploying user-facing AI products (preferred).
• Experience with DevOps and cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, or GCP (preferred).
• Experience with vector databases, data processing orchestrators (e.g., Airflow, Dagster), or message queue systems (e.g., AWS SQS, Kinesis, Kafka) (preferred).
• Experience building SaaS apps in the healthcare sector (preferred).
• Experience building Python SDKs/libraries (preferred).

Skills

Code Fluency

• Write code that captures the essential nature of the solution and is flexible, reusable, efficient, and adaptable to changing requirements.
• Provide high-quality code review feedback and foster an effective, collaborative code review culture.
• Strong awareness of team technologies and the broader ecosystem; introduce new ideas to solve business and technical problems.
• Responsible for successful project delivery, including planning, risk management, design, development, testing, rollout, and maintenance.
• Identify ways to simplify application code/infrastructure and improve developer efficiency (e.g., cycle time, ramp-up time).
• Experience with enterprise codebases and onboarding into established products.
• Preemptively identify and resolve technical risks before they jeopardize projects.
• Resolve cross-team dependencies early to ensure successful execution.
• Leverage existing Alaffia solutions or off-the-shelf tools, considering trade-offs.

Software Design

• Design software or systems in your area and ensure they meet their objectives.
• Provide quality feedback on designs written by other team members, asking probing questions to solidify choices and surface assumptions.
• Effectively debug cross-module issues using deep knowledge of libraries, platforms, and systems.

Architecture Design

• Create coherent designs with multiple interacting components across API or system boundaries, avoiding bugs due to mismatched expectations.
• Roll out components or major features reliably, including monitoring, paging, and understanding failure domains.
• Avoid introducing toil and future maintenance work by proactively addressing scaling issues and providing documentation.
• For early-stage products, roll out with an eye toward learning goals and appropriate trade-offs for “failing fast.”
• Design clear success metrics and achieve them consistently post-launch.

Business Acumen

• Engage in listening sessions to guide work and priorities.
• Understand Alaffia’s strategy and organizational structure to collaborate effectively across teams.

Our Culture

Alaffia was born out of our founders’ personal connection to the inefficiency of the U.S. healthcare system. We are deeply mission-driven, with an abiding belief that technology can help create a better future for everyone. We work in a flat organizational structure with direct access to leadership.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation (salary + equity).
• Medical, dental, and vision benefits.
• Flexible, paid vacation policy.