Principal Software Engineer, Backend Systems

About the CompanyOur client is an AI-native company automating the operational back office of healthcare. The platform ingests huge volumes of messy, unstructured inputs, documents, faxes, voice, and system events, and turns them into structured workflows that real teams depend on every day. This is not a chatbot or a thin AI wrapper. It is a live production platform, recently funded, growing fast, and small enough that this hire changes its trajectory.What You’ll Actually Be Working On The platform ingests high volumes of operational inputs including documents, emails, faxes, voice, system events, and customer requests, then transforms them into structured workflows used by teams in real time.This includes:File ingestion and processing pipelines, including OCR and document parsingEvent-driven workflows for routing, transformation, and downstream actionsSystems that must gracefully handle failure states, retries, and partial dataAI-assisted processing layers where LLMs are used to extract, interpret, and act on unstructured inputsMuch of the system exists today and works, but was built for an earlier stage. The next phase is about scaling reliability, improving correctness, and evolving the architecture under real production load.About the Role We are hiring a Principal Software Engineer to own the core backend systems of a high-throughput production platform. The systems exist today and they work, but they were built for an earlier stage. Your job is to reshape them under real load: scaling reliability, improving correctness, and evolving the architecture while the business grows around it. You will work directly with senior engineering leadership, influence platform direction, and own systems from design through production. This is a deeply hands-on individual contributor seat for someone who has stepped into complex, imperfect backend systems before and changed how they work.What You Will Do Design, build, and evolve backend services that process high-volume operational data in productionOwn and reshape distributed systems that power ingestion, transformation, routing, and persistence workflowsLead the decomposition and redesign of legacy or tightly coupled services into scalable, fault-tolerant systemsBuild microservices with strong guarantees around performance, availability, and correctnessWork with event-driven architectures, messaging systems, and data pipelines at scaleArchitect and operate cloud-native infrastructure using Kubernetes and GCPIdentify and resolve performance bottlenecks across services and data flowsPartner with engineering leadership on long-term platform architecture and technical directionShip production systems iteratively while maintaining a high bar for reliability and qualityWork directly with modern AI tools including Claude and similar systems to accelerate development, prototype solutions, and build production featuresWhat We Are Looking For 8+ years of experience building backend or distributed systems in production environmentsProven ownership of services operating under real uptime, latency, and scale constraintsStrong proficiency in Go, Python, or similar backend languagesExperience designing and evolving microservices, APIs, and event-driven systemsHands-on experience working with high-volume or unstructured data pipelinesStrong cloud-native experience with containerized systems and modern infrastructure toolingPrincipal-Level Expectations You have operated as a senior-most engineer on a team, owning ambiguous, high-impact systems without needing directionYou have stepped into systems that were not built for current scale and led meaningful architectural changeYou are comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and being accountable for the outcome in productionModern Development Approach Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Claude, Copilot, or similar, or strong interest in integrating them into your workflowHigh ownership mindset with the ability to drive complex problems through to productionClear communicator who collaborates well across engineering and product teamsNice to Have Experience evolving backend platforms in startup or growth-stage environmentsExposure to healthcare, fintech, logistics, or other operationally complex domainsExperience re-architecting systems under live customer loadBackground working on systems where architecture evolved alongside the businessThis Role Is Not a Fit If You prefer well-defined problems and stable systems over evolving, imperfect environmentsYour recent experience has been focused primarily on internal tools or low-scale applicationsYou have not worked directly on systems where failure, scale, and correctness are constant concernsYou prefer architectural discussions over hands-on implementationCompensation and Benefits Salary range: $200,000 to $300,000 USD depending on experience and impactCompetitive equity package401(k) programComprehensive health, dental, and vision coverageFlexible PTO and paid holidaysPaid parental leaveProfessional development stipendWhy This Role Matters This role sits at the core of the platform. The systems you build will directly impact how organizations operate every day, at scale. You will have real ownership, real responsibility, and the opportunity to reshape a platform that is already delivering meaningful impact and is still evolving quickly.If you enjoy complex backend challenges and want your work to matter, this role was built for you.