About the Role
This is a high-impact individual contributor role on our platform team, building large-scale data pipelines and distributed systems that power Sidecar Health's core product. You'll take full ownership of complex, ambiguous problems from architecture through production — designing, shipping, and running the systems you build. If you're a strong senior engineer who thrives on end-to-end ownership and wants your work to matter in healthcare, this is the role for you.**MUST BE BASED IN CALIFORNIA**
What You'll Do
- Design and own high-throughput, distributed data pipelines and platform infrastructure from concept through production
- Decompose large, ambiguous initiatives into structured, executable plans that the team can move on in parallel
- Write production-grade Python — strongly typed, well-structured, and built to last — not scripts or notebooks
- Optimize SQL at scale: query tuning, data modeling, and understanding execution plans
- Architect across boundaries — defining contracts between frontend, backend services, and infrastructure
- Be a technical resource and mentor for junior engineers, and partner directly with leadership on roadmap and technical decisions
- Instrument systems for observability — knowing what to monitor, not just how to read a dashboard
What You'll Bring
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with full ownership of production systems
- Strong proficiency in Python (mypy, Pydantic, proper abstractions) and SQL at scale
- Deep experience building and operating distributed data pipelines and event-driven architectures
- Hands-on AWS experience: Lambda, SQS, IAM, CloudWatch, and cost-aware design
- Docker as a first-class practice
- Habitual, fluent use of AI tools (Claude, Cursor, etc.) as part of your daily workflow
- Observability experience with Datadog or equivalent
- Familiarity with FastAPI, Django, SQLAlchemy, Celery, or Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, CDK) is a strong plus
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field
The Reality
This is a startup. We move fast. We prioritize impact over polish. We expect:
- Bias for action — ship, learn, iterate
- Ownership — you design it, build it, run it
- Pragmatism — solve real problems, not theoretical ones
- Resilience — ambiguity comes with the territory
Healthcare is complex and broken. The work matters.
What You'll Get
- Competitive salary, bonus opportunity, and equity package
- Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits
- A 401k retirement plan
- Paid vacation and company holidays
- Opportunity to make an impact at a rapidly growing mission-driven company transforming healthcare in the U.S.