Staff Backend Engineer

About the role

Heidi is building an AI Care Partner to transform clinical workflows. As a Staff Backend Engineer you will own the backend architecture, define service boundaries, and drive the design process for a high‑scale Python codebase.

Key responsibilities

• Own backend architecture, decide service vs module boundaries, and maintain data ownership.
• Write and review design docs, set architectural standards, and provide early feedback to engineers.
• Build and maintain service templates, shared libraries, migration tooling, CI pipelines, and a reliable local development environment.
• Establish and enforce code standards for structure, typing, testing, error handling, and observability.
• Lead large‑scale refactors, untangle complex modules, and ensure incremental delivery without blocking product work.
• Monitor system health metrics such as test coverage, build times, flaky tests, latency budgets, and database performance.

Required profile

• 8+ years of professional backend engineering experience with deep expertise in Python and its async ecosystem.
• Proven track record architecting scalable backend systems and defining clear module boundaries.
• Experience building platform tooling, service scaffolds, CI/CD pipelines, and maintaining them in a monorepo environment.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts such as idempotency, retries, backpressure, and graceful degradation.
• Comfort working with PHI under HIPAA‑compliant practices and designing for auditability and data residency.

Required skills

• Python (async), FastAPI, Django, SQLAlchemy, ORM patterns
• PostgreSQL and NoSQL databases, schema design, indexing, query tuning
• CI/CD pipelines, service templates, shared libraries, monorepo management
• Testing frameworks (pytest, TDD, BDD, contract testing)
• Observability tools (Datadog, distributed tracing, structured logging)
• AI‑assisted coding tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude, Codex)

What we offer

• $1,000 annual learning and development budget
• $150/month health and wellness allowance
• $500 home office budget
• 26 weeks paid primary parental leave, 18 weeks secondary parental leave
• Fertility support up to $10,000
• Four weeks of work‑from‑anywhere per year and equity participation