Principal Backend Developer

Role Description

This position on the software team has direct ownership of and responsibility for the architecture, scalability, reliability, security, and long-term evolution of our backend infrastructure.

• Help ensure that the integrated services and systems instrumental to the customer-facing experience (e.g. CRM, EHR, eComm, 3PL, etc.) are designed and operated to scale reliably.
• Lead the design and implementation of internal tools used by technical and non-technical leaders and teams across the company.
• Provide technical leadership across backend architecture, integration strategy, engineering standards, and platform decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and evolve a serverless backend stack in AWS, primarily utilizing Python 3.10+, Lambda, CDK, DynamoDB, Cloudfront, SNS, SQS, S3, and other related services.
• Lead the design, implementation, and integration of our REST API, event processors, services, and underlying datastores.
• Establish and guide backend engineering best practices across system design, observability, reliability, performance, maintainability, and security.
• Provide technical leadership to other team members, contractors, and partners.
• Drive architectural decisions and cross-functional technical alignment across software, mobile, web, eCommerce, operations, and partner-facing systems.
• Help ensure regulatory compliance and best practices are maintained across these systems.
• Identify technical risks, scalability bottlenecks, and platform gaps early, and proactively drive solutions.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in backend software development.
• 5+ years of experience in Python.
• 5+ years of experience building and operating production systems in AWS.
• Demonstrated experience designing scalable APIs, cloud infrastructure, and continuous integration workflows.
• Strong experience making technical tradeoffs across performance, reliability, security, and speed of execution.
• Proven ability to lead technical design and influence engineering direction across multiple systems or teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience working in the healthcare technology industry.
• Experience working in regulated environments involving security, privacy, and compliance requirements.
• Experience with serverless architecture at scale.
• Experience with GraphQL, OpenAPI, and client SDK generation tools.
• Experience integrating EHR, CRM, eCommerce, and logistics/3PL platforms.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and serving as a technical lead without direct people management responsibility.

Collaboration

You will directly collaborate with many members across the team and are expected to serve as a senior technical leader across backend systems and integrations.

• eCommerce: Work directly and regularly with technical and non-technical members of the eCommerce team to ensure seamless integration of purchasing, 3PL, CRM, and EHR systems.
• Mobile: Collaborate with the mobile engineering team to ensure the APIs used by our mobile apps and SDKs are properly designed, implemented, and maintained.
• Partners: Work with technical members of partner teams to understand, design, and develop APIs and integrations.

Salary Range

Estimated at approximately $180,000 to $240,000 depending on experience.

Benefits

• 100% premium coverage for employee's Health, Dental, and Vision Insurance. 50% premium coverage for dependents.
• 401k platform.
• Equity in company.
• WFH Stipend.

Additional Information

This is a highly strategic individual contributor role for a senior technical leader who can balance hands-on execution with long-term platform thinking. The right candidate should be comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment, making sound architectural decisions with incomplete information, and helping shape the backend foundation required for commercial scale.

Happy Health is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.