Senior Software Engineer - Knowledge Graph & Search (Backend)

Hinge Health • San Francisco, CA

7d • Hybrid

About The Position

Imagine you're a patient in pain, searching for the right provider who accepts your insurance, is close to home, and specializes in your condition. Now imagine getting it wrong—waiting weeks for an appointment only to discover they can't help you. This role exists to eliminate that frustration.
You'll build the search infrastructure and entity resolution systems that power Hinge Select—our integration of digital and in-person MSK care. As an early team member, you'll architect geospatial search capabilities that help millions of people find the right care, fast. You'll work at the intersection of search infrastructure, data quality, and healthcare—where precision isn't just nice to have, it has real patient impact.
What You'll Accomplish
In your first 3 months, you will:
Audit our current provider and facility discovery architecture, identifying gaps in geospatial search precision and entity resolution accuracy
Build relationships with product, design, and data engineering teams to understand upstream data sources and downstream user needs
Deliver your first search optimization—improving relevance tuning or query performance for a high-traffic lookup scenario

In your first 6 months, you will:
Design and launch geospatial search capabilities using Elasticsearch/OpenSearch (radius, bounding-box, polygon-based queries) that scale to millions of records
Extend entity resolution pipelines to deduplicate and reconcile provider data across multiple upstream sources, reducing duplicate records by 30%+
Own the async data ingestion pipeline for a critical data source, ensuring search indexes stay fresh and accurate

In your first year, you will:
Act as the code repository maintainer for the search and knowledge graph services, setting technical standards and mentoring junior engineers
Drive technical strategy for the team, balancing tradeoffs between search relevance, latency, and infrastructure cost
Integrate AI technologies to automate entity matching and improve search personalization, embodying our "Learn-it-all" principle by experimenting with novel approaches

Who You Are
A Learn-it-all: You don't have all the answers, but you thrive on solving novel problems—whether that's tuning geospatial queries or debugging cross-source data quality issues. You actively seek feedback and mentor others through thoughtful code reviews.
A Builder with Impact: You understand that getting entity resolution wrong has real consequences for patients. You balance technical excellence with pragmatism, knowing when to ship fast and when to invest in long-term scalability.
A Clear Communicator: You can explain complex technical concepts—like spatial indexing or fuzzy matching algorithms—to non-technical partners in product and design. You document your decisions clearly, making it easy for teammates to understand your work.
Collaborative and Accountable: You thrive in cross-functional environments, working across product, data engineering, and operations teams. You take ownership of your code in production and respond thoughtfully to incidents.

Requirements

• 5+ years of full-time software development experience building production systems at scale
• 3+ years of hands-on experience with Elasticsearch or OpenSearch, including index design, mapping configuration, query DSL, and relevance tuning
• Strong understanding of geospatial search (geo_point/geo_shape types, distance-based queries, bounding box filters) and entity resolution (matching, merging, and deduplicating records across disparate data sources)
• Proficiency in modern backend languages (Golang, Python, Java, or similar) and cloud-based services (gRPC, Docker/Kubernetes, AWS)

Nice To Haves

• Experience building search-driven discovery products (provider directories, marketplace search, location finders)
• Familiarity with healthcare data standards (NPI, FHIR) and identifiers
• Experience with spatial indexing libraries (PostGIS, H3, S2 geometry, Solr spatial)
• Background in record linkage and fuzzy matching techniques (Jaro-Winkler, Levenshtein, probabilistic matching)
• Experience with workflow orchestration systems (Temporal, Airflow, Step Functions) for data pipelines
• Exposure to gRPC service architectures and distributed systems
• Experience in healthcare technology or regulated environments
• AI technology experience for software design and coding
• Mentoring or onboarding junior engineers

Responsibilities

• Audit our current provider and facility discovery architecture, identifying gaps in geospatial search precision and entity resolution accuracy
• Build relationships with product, design, and data engineering teams to understand upstream data sources and downstream user needs
• Deliver your first search optimization—improving relevance tuning or query performance for a high-traffic lookup scenario
• Design and launch geospatial search capabilities using Elasticsearch/OpenSearch (radius, bounding-box, polygon-based queries) that scale to millions of records
• Extend entity resolution pipelines to deduplicate and reconcile provider data across multiple upstream sources, reducing duplicate records by 30%+
• Own the async data ingestion pipeline for a critical data source, ensuring search indexes stay fresh and accurate
• Act as the code repository maintainer for the search and knowledge graph services, setting technical standards and mentoring junior engineers
• Drive technical strategy for the team, balancing tradeoffs between search relevance, latency, and infrastructure cost
• Integrate AI technologies to automate entity matching and improve search personalization, embodying our "Learn-it-all" principle by experimenting with novel approaches

Benefits

• Inclusive healthcare and benefits: On top of comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, we offer employees and their family members help with gender-affirming care, tools for family and fertility planning, and travel reimbursements if healthcare isn't available where you live.
• Planning for the future: Start saving for the future with our traditional or Roth 401k retirement plan options which include a 2% company match.
• Modern life stipends: Manage your own learning and development with stipends to support your growth.

What This Job Offers

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