Senior Backend Software Engineer IV

Vida Health is looking for a highly skilled Backend Software Engineer IV to design, build, and scale the foundational backend services that power Vida’s member experiences. As a Level IV engineer on the Member Applications team, you will focus on the core APIs, data interactions, and cloud infrastructure that drive how members interact with our platform on a daily basis.

You will own complex technical initiatives end-to-end, working deeply with Python, Django, PostgreSQL, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). As we restructure our data layer, you will play a critical role in efficiently leveraging our hybrid data architecture (PostgreSQL, BigQuery, and dbt) to build highly responsive, personalized, and AI-driven member features. You will be a key technical leader, mentoring peers, evolving our infrastructure as code (Terraform), and ensuring a resilient, scalable backend that delivers a premium member journey.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the architectural design and technical strategy for new backend systems, microservices, and scalable member-facing APIs.
• Design robust, versioned REST APIs that seamlessly power cross-platform web and mobile (React Native) member applications.
• Evaluate trade-offs in system design, ensuring high availability, security, and low latency for a growing healthcare platform.
• Evolve database models, schemas, and indexing strategies in PostgreSQL to support complex, high-throughput application logic.
• Write clean, performant, and highly testable code primarily in Python and Django.
• Provision, manage, and optimize cloud infrastructure on GCP—including IAM and Compute—utilizing Terraform (Infrastructure as Code).
• Manage containerized deployments and orchestrate services using Docker and Kubernetes.
• Implement and refine asynchronous event-driven systems (e.g., Celery, Pub/Sub) to handle application workflows and notifications.
• Utilize AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate delivery and maintain high engineering velocity.
• Architect application-level data access patterns that efficiently interact with our newly restructured data layer, pulling from both operational databases (PostgreSQL) and analytical warehouses (BigQuery transformed via dbt).
• Collaborate on and utilize dbt (data build tool) models to ensure backend applications consume well-structured, tested, and documented analytical data.
• Optimize complex BigQuery and SQL queries to ensure low-latency data retrieval for personalized, member-facing features.
• Partner with Data Engineering and AI teams to seamlessly consume structured data and models that drive smart, automated member interactions in the app.
• Drive a culture of operational excellence by defining and monitoring SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs for member-facing services.
• Implement advanced monitoring, alerting, and logging using Datadog, GCP Cloud Monitoring, and distributed tracing tools.
• Lead root-cause analysis (RCA) for complex production incidents and implement permanent architectural safeguards.
• Serve as a technical mentor to mid-level engineers, elevating the team’s capabilities in system design, Python best practices, and cloud architecture.
• Champion rigorous engineering standards, including code review practices, comprehensive documentation, and automated testing strategies.
• Partner closely with Product, Design, and React Native frontend teams to deliver seamless, secure, and compliant end-to-end member experiences.
• Additional responsibilities as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree at a minimum. 
• 7+ years of professional engineering experience with a proven track record of leading technical projects and cross-functional initiatives.
• Deep, senior-level expertise in Python and the Django framework, with a proven track record of maintaining large-scale production applications.
• Exceptional system design skills, with the ability to architect reliable, distributed backend services that power mobile and web clients.
• Strong hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Proven experience defining and managing infrastructure as code using Terraform.
• Hands-on experience working with Google BigQuery and dbt (specifically around query optimization, utilizing dbt models in application code, and integrating analytical data into application backends).
• Deep knowledge of containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Advanced proficiency in SQL and relational database architecture, specifically PostgreSQL.
• Strong understanding of observability, profiling, and performance tuning in production environments.
• Excellent technical communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex architectural decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred:

Experience using AI-powered development tools (e.g., Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot).
Experience in the healthcare industry or other highly regulated environments (HIPAA, SOC2 compliance).
Experience integrating AI/LLM models or working alongside Data Science teams to build user-facing AI features.
Hands-on experience with asynchronous task queues and messaging brokers (Celery, Redis, RabbitMQ, Pub/Sub).
Familiarity with building automation hooks and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, etc.).