Principal Backend Engineer

Qualified Health PBC•Palo Alto, CA

10d•$230,000 - $330,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Qualified Health is hiring a Principal Backend Engineer to shape the technical direction and architecture of its generative AI healthcare SaaS platform. As a senior individual contributor, this person will lead the design and evolution of critical backend systems, solve complex technical challenges, and establish engineering foundations for reliable and secure growth. The role works closely with engineering, product, AI, and security leadership to turn business priorities into long-term technical strategy, lead high-impact initiatives across teams, and make architectural decisions that balance innovation with operational excellence. It combines hands-on engineering with technical leadership, including tackling complex engineering problems, raising standards, and helping shape the technical culture of a rapidly growing organization. The position is based on-site at the Palo Alto office three days per week. Compensation is $230,000–$330,000, depending on skills, qualifications, experience, and location, and the role is eligible for equity and benefits.

Requirements

Demonstrated track record architecting, building, and operating complex, large-scale backend or platform systems in production, with measurable technical and business impact.
Deep expertise in distributed systems, including service architecture, data consistency, concurrency, fault tolerance, scalability, and performance optimization.
Expert-level proficiency in at least one modern backend programming language and ability and willingness to work extensively in Python.
Strong experience designing and operating cloud-native applications on AWS, GCP, or Azure, with understanding of infrastructure automation, deployment practices, and production operations.
Deep understanding of API design, data modeling, databases, asynchronous processing, and modern backend architectural patterns.
Ability to navigate ambiguity, independently identify important technical problems, and translate complex requirements into pragmatic, scalable engineering solutions.
Demonstrated ability to improve engineering effectiveness through architectural simplification, reusable systems, mentorship, and technical standards.
Ability to work on-site in the Palo Alto office three days per week.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing, building, or operating production generative AI applications, LLM-powered workflows, or AI infrastructure.
Experience building multi-tenant enterprise SaaS platforms with strong security, isolation, scalability, and availability requirements.
Experience with Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Terraform, and modern monitoring and observability tooling.
Experience building systems in regulated environments, including healthcare, financial services, or other industries with stringent data privacy and security requirements.
Familiarity with HIPAA, SOC 2, or comparable security and compliance frameworks.
Experience establishing technical foundations, engineering standards, and architectural direction in rapidly growing organizations.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the long-term technical direction for core backend systems and services, establishing architectural principles that support scalability, security, reliability, and sustainable growth.
Identify and lead complex engineering initiatives across multiple teams, align technical priorities, resolve architectural disagreements, and drive initiatives from design through production operation.
Design, implement, and review critical backend infrastructure components; lead by example through high-quality code, system design, and technical problem-solving; and foster an AI-first culture.
Architect resilient distributed systems, APIs, data services, and asynchronous workflows for growing enterprise workloads, complex integrations, and evolving product needs.
Improve reliability, observability, performance, and operational efficiency; partner with Platform and Infrastructure teams on service-level objectives, capacity planning, incident prevention, and systemic improvements.
Mentor Senior and Staff engineers, develop emerging technical leaders, and promote technical rigor, collaboration, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Partner with engineering, product, and business leadership to evaluate technical investments, make build-versus-buy decisions, manage architectural trade-offs, and balance near-term delivery with long-term platform sustainability.