Engineering Manager, Backend Team

Axle Health • Santa Monica, CA

21h • $200,000 - $250,000

About The Position

Axle Health is hiring a hands-on backend Engineering Manager to lead a team of six engineers and own the technical direction, delivery, and production health of its backend systems and cloud infrastructure. The role reports to the CTO and is approximately 60% hands-on engineering and 40% management. The manager will design, write, review, and ship code alongside the team, coach engineers, manage concurrent work streams, and lead backend and DevOps hiring. The role calls for strong technical judgment, high standards for reliability and code quality, and the ability to balance rapid delivery with systems that can scale as customer volume grows.

Axle Health builds AI-powered scheduling and workforce management software for home healthcare organizations. Its platform includes logistics algorithms, a mobile app for field staff, an operations dashboard, patient engagement and booking tools, and integrations and external APIs. The backend Engineering Manager will own architecture for high-volume systems, AWS infrastructure, CI/CD and deployment automation, production reliability and observability, and security and compliance for healthcare data. The position also partners with product, front-end engineering, and the interoperability team to plan and deliver shared systems.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years managing a team of 4–8 engineers while remaining hands-on in the code.
• Deep backend expertise in Python/Django and/or Node.js with TypeScript, including relational database design and performance tuning in PostgreSQL or a similar database.
• Production ownership, including accountability for on-call, incident response, observability, and postmortems.
• Technical leadership experience driving architecture decisions, setting engineering standards, and building consensus on difficult technical tradeoffs.
• Working knowledge of AWS, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code sufficient to own infrastructure decisions directly.
• Proven ability to hire, develop, and retain strong engineers.
• Experience at an early- or growth-stage startup, with comfort building structure and making judgment calls without an established playbook.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building systems handling HIPAA-protected data or working in another compliance-heavy industry, such as SOC 2 or fintech.
• Hands-on experience with Terraform, Docker/Kubernetes, and Datadog or similar observability tooling.
• Background in scheduling, logistics, or optimization systems.
• Experience building data pipelines or ETL into cloud data warehouses for analytics and reporting.
• Experience using AI tools such as Claude Code or Cursor to accelerate development and review workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design, write, review, and ship backend code across services and APIs, setting a quality standard through hands-on work.
• Manage and develop backend engineers through regular feedback, coaching, and clear expectations.
• Lead hiring for backend and DevOps opportunities.
• Own architecture decisions for high-volume backend systems, including service design, data modeling, API and SDK design, and performance.
• Own AWS infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment automation, and improve DevOps maturity.
• Own production health, including monitoring, alerting, on-call, incident response, and postmortems that drive fixes.
• Ensure backend systems and infrastructure meet healthcare data security standards, including HIPAA and SOC 2, from design through deployment.
• Scope, sequence, and track concurrent backend work streams, communicate with stakeholders, and set realistic delivery commitments.
• Partner with product, front-end engineering, and the interoperability team to translate requirements into technical plans and maintain shared systems.
• Improve testing, code review, and development processes so the team can ship quickly without sacrificing reliability.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity compensation; all employees receive equity.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k) plan.
• Flexible PTO and sick days.
• Commuter benefits.
• Santa Monica headquarters with beach views and daily catered lunches.
• Fast-paced environment geared toward professional growth and opportunities to move roles within the organization.
• Monthly team events, dinners, and happy hours, plus special team outings.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed