Staff Software Engineer, Backend

Ro is a direct-to-patient healthcare company with a mission of helping patients achieve their health goals by delivering the easiest, most effective care possible. Ro is the only company to offer nationwide telehealth, labs, and pharmacy services. This is enabled by Ro's vertically integrated platform that helps patients achieve their goals through a convenient, end-to-end healthcare experience spanning from diagnosis, to delivery of medication, to ongoing care. Since 2017, Ro has helped millions of patients, including one in every county in the United States, and in 98% of primary care deserts.

Ro has been recognized as a Fortune Best Workplace in New York and Health Care for four consecutive years (2021-2024). In 2023, Ro was also named Best Workplace for Parents for the third year in a row. In 2022, Ro was listed as a CNBC Disruptor 50. 

The Role

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join the team at Ro. In this role, you will design, build, and maintain scalable, reliable, and secure backend services. 

You will design and implement new applications and enhance existing platform capabilities while contributing to the evolution of Ro’s technical architecture. You will also help define the technical roadmap, owning initiatives from ideation through design, implementation, and maintenance. 

Staff Software Engineers at Ro are technical leaders, mentors, and architects. They have high-impact with broad accountability and influence across engineering teams and business stakeholders. If you are someone who thrives in this sort of environment, has a strong product mindset, and is passionate about building systems at scale, we’d love to hear from you.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build scalable, reliable, and resilient distributed services using Python and FastAPI
• Operate as an owner and technical leader within your team's domain and proactively assess and improve system performance and reliability
• Drive engineering excellence through best practices in testing, monitoring, observability, and performance optimization
• Actively contribute to building the team’s architectural vision and technical roadmap
• Collaborate on code reviews and technical design documents to ensure the consistent application of best practices across relevant domains
• Lead cross-functional technical efforts — collaborating closely with product managers, designers, and engineers from adjacent teams to ensure alignment and technical integrity across boundaries
• Participate in on-call rotations to ensure reliability of production systems

What You’ll Bring to the Team

• 7 - 10+ years of software engineering experience
• Experience architecting, designing and building scalable web applications and distributed systems
• Proficiency with Python, relational databases, and frameworks like FastAPI or Django, with hands-on experience in metrics instrumentation and data-driven performance tuning leveraging Ro’s load testing infrastructure and tools like Datadog
• Proven track record of scaling complex, data-intensive backend systems through rapid growth (ideally in a mid-to-late stage startup environment), ensuring high performance and availability
• Deep understanding of distributed systems-data consistency, communication patterns, and service boundaries-backed by hands-on experience building and maintaining data-intensive production systems
• Strong sense of ownership, with the ability to understand and break down complex problem spaces into technical roadmaps
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with other engineers and cross-functional partners to create the best possible products

Bonus Skills

• Experience in telehealth or other highly regulated industries
• Experience with decoupling monolithic applications into distributed asynchronous services

We’ve Got You Covered

• Full medical, dental, and vision insurance + OneMedical membership
• Healthcare and Dependent Care FSA
• 401(k) with company match
• Flexible PTO
• Wellbeing + Learning & Growth reimbursements
• Paid parental leave + Fertility benefits
• Pet insurance
• Student loan refinancing
• Virtual resources for mindfulness, counseling, and fitness

The target base salary for this position ranges from $202,000 to $243,000, in addition to a competitive equity and benefits package (as applicable). When determining compensation, we analyze and carefully consider several factors, including location, job-related knowledge, skills and experience. These considerations may cause your compensation to vary.

Ro recognizes the power of in-person collaboration, while supporting the flexibility to work anywhere in the United States. For our Ro’ers in the tri-state (NY) area, you will join us at HQ on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For those outside of the tri-state area, you will be able to join in-person collaborations throughout the year (i.e., during team on-sites).

At Ro, we believe that our diverse perspectives are our biggest strengths — and that embracing them will create real change in healthcare. As an equal opportunity employer, we provide equal opportunity in all aspects of employment, including recruiting, hiring, compensation, training and promotion, termination, and any other terms and conditions of employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, familial status, age, disability and/or any other legally protected classification protected by federal, state, or local law.

See our California Privacy Policy here .