Lead Backend Engineer (Healthcare Data & ETL)
Vida Health
Software Engineering
United States
Posted on Sep 30, 2025
ABOUT US
At Vida, we help people get better- and we're helping the healthcare system get better, too.
Vida is a virtual, personalized obesity care provider that uses evidence-based treatment to help patients manage obesity and related conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety and depression. Vida's team of Obesity Medicine-Certified Physicians, Registered Dietitians, Expert Coaches and Licensed Therapists takes a whole-person approach to care, helping people lose weight, reduce stress and improve their overall health.
By combining advanced technology with top-notch healthcare providers, Vida is breaking down the barriers that have historically kept people from getting the best care. It's trusted by Fortune 100 companies, major national payers and large providers to enable their employees to live their healthiest lives.
**Vida is authorized to do business in many, but not all, states. If you are not located in or able to work from a state where Vida is registered, you will not be eligible for employment. Please speak with your recruiter to learn more about where Vida is registered.
We are looking for a Lead Backend Engineer to own and scale our healthcare data systems. You will design, build and optimize ETL pipelines, transform complex healthcare datasets and guide our engineering team in supporting data science and product initiatives. This is a hands-on leadership role where you will set technical direction while mentoring others, ensuring our platform handles healthcare data (eligibility, claims, Rx) securely, reliably and at scale.
Responsibilities:
- Own and lead backend data engineering efforts, from architecture to implementation.
- Design and optimize ETL pipelines for healthcare datasets (eligibility, claims, Rx).
- Transform and normalize raw healthcare data into usable formats for analytics, data science and product workflows.
- Collaborate with data science, product and engineering teams to prioritize data needs and deliver reliable pipelines.
- Establish best practices for data ingestion, validation, monitoring and performance optimization.
- Mentor engineers and contribute to building a high-performing backend/data team.
- Drive compliance and security for healthcare standards (HIPAA, PHI, audit requirements).
- Evaluate and integrate new technologies (e.g., FHIR APIs, modern data frameworks) to keep our stack best-in-class.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field (or equivalent experience).
- 6–8+ years of backend or data engineering experience, including leading complex projects.
- Strong expertise in Python (preferred) or another backend language (Java, Scala, Go).
- Proven experience designing and managing ETL pipelines and data transformation frameworks (e.g., Airflow, dbt, Luigi).
- Deep familiarity with healthcare data formats and workflows including Eligibility, Claims, Pharmacy/Rx.
- Experience partnering with data science and transformation engineers to build production models and algorithms.
- Experience with databases and data warehouses (Postgres, Redshift, BigQuery, Snowflake).
- Cloud infrastructure knowledge (AWS, GCP, or Azure) with hands-on deployment experience.
- Understanding of RESTful APIs, JSON and healthcare integration standards (FHIR, HL7).
- Demonstrated ability to mentor junior engineers and lead cross-functional projects.
- Bonus: prior experience with payer integrations, healthcare eligibility APIs, or high-volume healthcare data environments.
Vida is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer.
Diversity is more than a commitment at Vida—it is the foundation of what we do. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.
We seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. We don’t just accept differences — we celebrate them, we support them, and we thrive on them for the benefit of our employees, our platform and those we serve. Vida is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures.
We do not accept unsolicited assistance from any headhunters or recruitment firms for any of our job openings. All resumes or profiles submitted by search firms to any employee at Vida in any form without a valid, signed search agreement in place for the specific position will be deemed the sole property of Vida. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by Vida as a result of the unsolicited referral.
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