Senior Software Engineer, Backend at Sidecar Health

<p>Sidecar Health is redefining health insurance. Our mission is to make excellent healthcare affordable and accessible for everyone. We know that to accomplish this lofty mission, we need driven people who will make things happen.</p> <p>The passionate people who make up Sidecar Health’s team come from all over, with backgrounds as tech leaders, policy makers, healthcare professionals, and beyond. And they all have one thing in common—the desire to fix a broken system and make it more personalized, affordable, and transparent.</p> <p>If you want to use your talents to transform healthcare in the United States, come join us!</p> <p><strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">About the Role</span></strong></p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">This is a high-impact individual contributor role at the core of our backend engineering team, building the services, APIs, and data systems that power Sidecar Health's platform. You'll own complex, performance-critical systems end-to-end — from design through deployment — and make the architectural decisions that keep us fast and reliable as we scale. If you treat every feature like your name is on it and want to build things that matter in healthcare, this is the role for you.<br><br><em>**MUST BE BASED IN CALIFORNIA**</em></p> <p><strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">What You'll Do&nbsp;</span></strong></p> <ul> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Design, build, and own scalable backend services and APIs that handle complex healthcare data and workflows</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Optimize database queries and data models to ensure system performance and reliability at scale</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Evaluate and articulate technical tradeoffs across system design, performance, and maintainability</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Integrate AI tools and agentic coding patterns into backend workflows where they add real value</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Write clean, well-tested, production-grade code with a high bar for quality</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Partner with product, data, and cross-functional stakeholders to translate requirements into robust technical solutions</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Contribute to engineering standards through code reviews, technical discussion, and better defaults</li> </ul> <p><strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">What You'll Bring&nbsp;</span></strong></p> <ul> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">5+ years of professional software engineering experience with strong backend ownership of production systems</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Deep expertise in Java and/or Python</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Proven experience with system design and the ability to articulate tradeoffs between architectural approaches</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Solid fundamentals in testing, debugging, performance optimization, and code review</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Habitual, fluent use of AI tools (Claude, Cursor, etc.) as part of your daily workflow</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Comfortable owning cloud deployments, preferably on AWS (EC2, Lambda, RDS, S3)</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Familiarity with data engineering frameworks — Airflow, dbt, Snowflake, or Dagster — is a strong plus</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Experience building AI agents is a plus</li> <li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience</li> </ul> <p><span data-preserver-spaces="true"><strong>The Reality<br></strong></span></p> <p data-start="4003" data-end="4080">This is a startup. We move fast. We prioritize impact over polish. We expect:</p> <ul> <li data-start="4084" data-end="4124">Bias for action — ship, learn, iterate</li> <li data-start="4127" data-end="4172">Ownership — you design it, build it, run it</li> <li data-start="4175" data-end="4231">Pragmatism — solve real problems, not theoretical ones</li> <li data-start="4234" data-end="4283">Resilience — ambiguity comes with the territory</li> </ul> <p data-start="4285" data-end="4336">Healthcare is complex and broken. The work matters.</p> <p><span data-preserver-spaces="true"><strong>What You'll Get&nbsp;</strong></span></p> <ul> <li>Competitive salary, bonus opportunity, and equity package&nbsp;&nbsp;</li> <li>Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits</li> <li>A 401k retirement plan</li> <li>Paid vacation and company holidays</li> <li>Opportunity to make an impact at a rapidly growing mission-driven company transforming healthcare in the U.S.</li> </ul><div class="content-conclusion"><p><span class="TextRun SCXW9346378 BCX0" lang="EN-US" data-contrast="auto"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW9346378 BCX0">Sidecar Health is an Equal Opportunity employer committed to building a diverse team. We do not discriminate&nbsp;</span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW9346378 BCX0" lang="EN-US" data-contrast="auto"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW9346378 BCX0">on the basis of</span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW9346378 BCX0" lang="EN-US" data-contrast="auto"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW9346378 BCX0"> race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability status.</span></span></p></div>