Staff Data Engineer

Trial Library•San Francisco, CA

3d•$168,000 - $230,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Trial Library is seeking a Staff Data Engineer to own the pipelines responsible for moving patient data through their AI-native research platform. This role is central to a significant architectural shift towards robust, automated integrations for ingesting complete patient records, moving away from manual data pulls. The data managed will power AI-assisted patient-trial matching. The ideal candidate will be comfortable with healthcare data at HIPAA-grade stakes, real-world data inputs, and building pipelines that impact patient outcomes. The engineering culture emphasizes direct communication, strong ownership, and low-ego collaboration, with a bias towards action and quick decision-making. AI is deeply integrated into the company's product and SDLC, used for coding, testing, measuring, and iterating, and is considered a competitive advantage. The platform is built on AWS (Lambda, Fargate, SQS, RDS, Bedrock) with Pulumi-managed infrastructure, a backend primarily in TypeScript, and a data layer centered on PostgreSQL and Drizzle. The company values pragmatic architecture, developer velocity, and systems that evolve rapidly.

Requirements

8 or more years of data engineering experience, with at least a couple of years operating at staff scope or equivalent impact.
Demonstrated high-impact ownership.
Strong pipeline engineering skills: ingestion, transformation, and orchestration of data at meaningful scale, with attention to data quality and reliability.
Deep SQL and PostgreSQL fluency, including schema design and query performance.
Solid Python and comfort working in a codebase with TypeScript.
Deep AWS experience (Lambda, Fargate, SQS, RDS, and the surrounding ecosystem) and the ability to choose the right service for the right job.
Proven track record of leveraging AI coding tools creatively and effectively to build production systems.
Demonstrated ability to take autonomous ownership, identifying and resolving systemic issues independently.
Startup experience, having built from scratch at an early-stage company and treated ambiguity as an opportunity.
Strong systems thinking, encompassing backend architecture, APIs, databases, and scalability under real-world constraints.
Clear communication and influence, with the ability to explain trade-offs to both engineers and non-engineers.
Healthcare alignment with a genuine interest in improving clinical trial access and health equity.
HIPAA experience is a strong plus.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with IaC tooling (Terraform, Pulumi, etc).
Familiarity with clinical or healthcare data standards (EHR/EMR, HL7/FHIR).
Familiarity with API design patterns.
Experience in a regulated industry.

Responsibilities

Own the ingestion and transformation pipelines that bring patient records into the platform and shape them into data that matching systems and human experts can trust.
Design for reliability in compute-intensive, long-running workflows, utilizing async pipelines, message queues, and container-based compute.
Own data quality end-to-end, including schema design, validation, transformation logic, and monitoring.
Partner closely with AI engineers on data foundations for patient-trial matching.
Collaborate with product engineers on how ingested data flows into user workflows.
Monitor production, triage issues quickly, and exercise pragmatic judgment by matching technology to business needs.

Benefits

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and eligible dependents.
Disability, life, and supplemental insurance options.
Flexible paid time off.
Observed company holidays.
One-time home office stipend.
401(k) program.
Pre-tax HSA and FSA options.
Commuter benefits.
Financial wellness resources.
Access to legal protection plans.
Access to voluntary benefit offerings including pet wellness support.
Domestic partner coverage.
Additional programs that support the diverse needs of our team members and their families.