Senior Software Engineer — Backend / Platform

Location: New York City, NY (Preferred) | Boston, MA (Also Considered)
Work Arrangement: Hybrid — NYC office Tuesday through Thursday
Employment Type: Full-Time
Industry: AI / Healthcare Technology

About the Opportunity

We're partnering with a well-funded, high-growth AI healthcare startup that's reimagining how patients access personalized medical care.

Rather than layering AI onto outdated healthcare infrastructure, the company is building an AI-native healthcare platform from the ground up, combining advanced artificial intelligence with real clinical expertise to deliver faster, more accessible, and highly personalized care.

With backing from leading venture capital firms and rapidly expanding enterprise partnerships, the company is scaling its core engineering infrastructure to support its next phase of growth.

We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join a small, highly technical Platform & Integrations team responsible for the foundational systems powering the company's products and enterprise integrations.

This isn't a role focused on maintaining legacy services or simply adding endpoints. You'll help architect systems that other engineering teams, enterprise customers, and healthcare applications depend on.

What You'll Be Building

You'll work on two critical areas of the platform:

1. Public APIs & Enterprise Integrations

Design and evolve external-facing APIs that enable enterprise healthcare partners to integrate the company's capabilities directly into their applications.

2. Core Data Infrastructure

Build scalable systems that ingest, normalize, reconcile, and expose complex healthcare data from electronic health records, wearable devices, medications, laboratory results, and third-party platforms.

The engineering challenges involve distributed systems, high-volume data processing, durable data models, and designing APIs that remain reliable as the platform scales.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain production-grade public APIs consumed by external customers and enterprise partners.

• Architect scalable backend services and reusable platform components supporting critical business functionality.

• Develop foundational data models capable of handling structured records, unstructured data, and high-frequency time-series information.

• Build reliable ingestion and integration frameworks to normalize data from multiple external sources.

• Design and maintain asynchronous processing systems, distributed workflows, and event-driven architectures.

• Ensure API reliability, backwards compatibility, versioning, security, and long-term maintainability.

• Collaborate with engineering teams and enterprise partners to develop scalable integration solutions.

• Take end-to-end ownership of complex backend projects, from initial architecture through production deployment.

• Contribute to technical decisions that shape the platform's long-term architecture.

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications

• 5–6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial hands-on backend development.

• Strong experience building production backend systems using TypeScript/Node.js , or comparable backend technologies with the ability to ramp up quickly.

• Demonstrated experience designing and maintaining external-facing/public APIs used by customers, partners, or other engineering teams.

• Deep understanding of relational databases, preferably PostgreSQL, including schema design, optimization, and data modeling.

• Experience with distributed systems, message queues, asynchronous workflows, and scalable backend architectures.

• Proven ability to independently own significant technical projects from design to deployment.

• Strong engineering fundamentals, architectural judgment, communication, and problem-solving skills.

• Comfort working in a fast-moving startup environment with high ownership and accountability.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience at a high-growth, venture-backed technology startup.

• Background in API-first products, developer infrastructure, fintech, enterprise SaaS, or integration platforms.

• Experience building foundational data models or high-throughput data ingestion infrastructure.

• Familiarity with Kafka, Redis, SQS, Temporal, or similar distributed processing technologies.

• Experience with healthcare interoperability, EHR integrations, FHIR/HL7, or clinical data platforms.

• Previous founding engineer or early-stage engineering experience.

• Computer Science degree or equivalent demonstrated technical expertise.

Technology Stack

The platform currently uses:

• Backend: TypeScript, Node.js, Bun

• Databases: PostgreSQL, Redis

• Messaging & Workflows: AWS SQS, Temporal

• Cloud: AWS, GCP

• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes

The team values strong engineering fundamentals over familiarity with every specific tool. Candidates with exceptional backend experience in Go, Python, or Java may also be considered.

Why Join?

Meaningful Architectural Ownership

Join a lean backend team where your technical decisions directly influence the systems the entire company builds upon.

Real Greenfield Engineering

Work on new integration frameworks, API infrastructure, and foundational data models rather than spending your time maintaining legacy applications.

Impact at Enterprise Scale

Build infrastructure supporting integrations with major healthcare organizations and digital health platforms.

Work at the Intersection of AI and Healthcare

Contribute to a platform combining AI innovation, clinical expertise, and production-scale healthcare infrastructure.

Strong Growth Potential

Join a well-capitalized, rapidly growing startup at a stage where individual engineers can make a meaningful impact on both product and architecture.

Location & Working Arrangement

New York City candidates are strongly preferred. The engineering team collaborates in person at its Flatiron office, typically Tuesday through Thursday.

Candidates based in Boston may also be considered for a hybrid arrangement.

The company has a collaborative, high-ownership startup culture and is looking for engineers who enjoy solving challenging technical problems and taking responsibility for their work.

Work Authorization: Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without employer visa sponsorship.

About Sperton

We are a recruitment and consulting company with an international reach. We are committed to helping our clients achieve success in their hiring processes, finding the right people for the right positions.