Staff Backend Engineer (RWE) - Distributed Systems & Data Platform

H1•New York, NY

3d•Remote

About The Position

At H1, we believe access to the best healthcare information is a basic human right. Our mission is to provide a platform that can optimally inform every doctor interaction globally. This promotes health equity and builds needed trust in healthcare systems. To accomplish this our teams harness the power of data and AI-technology to unlock groundbreaking medical insights and convert those insights into action that result in optimal patient outcomes and accelerates an equitable and inclusive drug development lifecycle. As a Staff Backend Engineer on the Real World Evidence (RWE) team, you'll be one of the most senior individual contributors and a key technical leader responsible for building the backend systems and platform capabilities that power some of H1's largest healthcare datasets. You'll partner closely with Product, Data Engineering, AI/ML, and downstream engineering teams to turn ambiguous business problems into scalable technical solutions that improve how healthcare data is processed, linked, and delivered.

Requirements

8+ years building scalable backend software, distributed systems, or platform infrastructure in production environments.
Strong experience designing scalable, reliable backend architectures and making technical decisions around system design, performance, and maintainability.
Strong programming experience in Python or another modern backend language (Java, Go, Scala, C++, etc.) with the ability to quickly become productive in Python.
Experience building systems that process large volumes of data or high-throughput distributed workloads.
Experience working in cloud-native environments (AWS preferred) and deploying distributed systems in production.
Demonstrated ability to independently lead complex technical initiatives, influence architectural direction, and partner effectively across engineering and product organizations.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Spark, Kafka, Hudi, Airflow, or other distributed data technologies is a plus—but we're equally interested in backend engineers with strong distributed systems experience who are excited to deepen their expertise in modern data engineering.

Responsibilities

Act as a self-starter who drives execution independently, taking ownership and initiative with minimal day-to-day direction.
Lead high-impact backend and platform initiatives that support large-scale healthcare data processing and critical customer-facing capabilities.
Own architectural decisions for backend services and distributed systems, ensuring solutions are scalable, reliable, and aligned with H1's long-term technical vision.
Design and build highly scalable backend services, APIs, and processing systems capable of supporting hundreds of terabytes of healthcare data.
Partner closely with Product, Data Engineering, AI/ML, and Engineering leadership to translate ambiguous business needs into technical roadmaps and production-ready solutions.
Collaborate across engineering teams to reduce technical bottlenecks, improve platform capabilities, and accelerate delivery.
Represent engineering in cross-functional planning discussions, helping shape technical strategy while influencing without formal authority.
Mentor engineers through technical leadership, architectural guidance, design reviews, and thoughtful engineering practices.