Senior Back End Software Engineer (Elixir)
Papa is a new kind of care built on human connection. Across the country, health plans and employers look to Papa to provide vital social support by pairing older adults and families with Papa Pals, trained and vetted companions, who provide a helping hand and an open ear, resulting in less loneliness and better health.
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Miami, Papa is backed by Canaan, Tiger Global Management, Comcast Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, TCG, Initialized Capital, and Seven Seven Six, among other revered institutional and individual investors. We envision a world where no one has to go it alone. Learn more at Papa.com.
We are looking to expand the team and bring on a Senior Elixir Back End Software Engineer. The team at Papa is building our technology platform to enable meaningful human connections between our Papas and Pals. We own the full stack: CI/CD, AWS infrastructure, database, back end, and web and mobile front ends. We encourage all team members to give input on engineering and product challenges across the entire spectrum of solutions.
We are a small team of highly experienced, and highly competent engineers constantly investing in our own growth, and the growth of others on the team. We are all in this to win together. We pride ourselves on our low ego and collaborative approach to problem solving.
Our products are not just an app or a database, it’s a lifeline to real human companionship for so many people that desperately need it. We've provided millions of hours of companionship, transportation, and help with small tasks. Some members only need us for a short period. Others use our services weekly. Our Pals enjoy being able to help people and form relationships. We even have members who've only needed service for a few weeks later join up as Papa Pals!
Product Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and maintain scalable Elixir services that are core to Papa’s operations and member experiences.
- Own large-scale system components from architecture to deployment, driving clean, well-tested, and well-documented code.
- Work across the stack to improve the performance, reliability, and scalability of our applications.
- Collaborate with engineering and product teams to define technical solutions that align with business goals and deliver measurable impact.
- Contribute to our GraphQL API design and implementation, enabling seamless integration with mobile, web applications, and vendor services.
- Proactively identify areas for improvement in our systems and processes, and lead initiatives to address them.
- Participate in technical planning, estimations, and decision-making to help guide the direction of our platform.
Minimum Qualifications
- 7+ years of software development experience
- Experience building and shipping high quality work and achieving high reliability
- Experience improving quality through thoughtful code reviews, appropriate testing, proper rollout, monitoring, etc.
- Experience leveraging coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, etc)
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience writing and maintaining GraphQL API’s
- Experience with Phoenix LiveView
- Experience with React front-end maintenance
- Experience with connecting to vendor APIs, secure use of SMS, IVR, and voice APIs, HIPAA compliance, and AWS services
- AI experience beyond coding agents such as integrations with AI vendors, addition of agentic AI to existing systems, replacing manual processes with AI, etc.
- A strong communicator and collaborator
- Passionate about improving healthcare access and outcomes
Papa Culture
Papa’s culture is people first. While we have an incredible team of hard-working Papa people, at the end of the day, our company is really about family and community – and we celebrate that among our employees. We encourage everyone to bring their whole authentic selves to work. To be transparent. To be non-hierarchical. And, above all, to be a really good person.
We see ourselves as a place where every Papa employee feels they belong, a place where careers flourish, a place that brings back purpose and joy to work, a culture where visionaries/entrepreneurs are developed.