Lead Backend Engineer (Healthcare Data & ETL)

Vida Health

86d • $140,000 - $175,000

About The Position

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. 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.

Requirements

• 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.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience with payer integrations, healthcare eligibility APIs, or high-volume healthcare data environments.

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.

Benefits

• $140,000 - $175,000 a year

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees