Senior Backend Software Engineer IV

Vida Health is a virtual, personalized obesity care provider that uses evidence-based treatment to help patients manage obesity and related conditions. They are seeking a highly skilled Backend Software Engineer IV to design, build, and scale backend services that enhance member experiences, focusing on APIs, data interactions, and cloud infrastructure.

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

Requirements:

• 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
• 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.)