Staff Software Engineer

Staff Backend Engineer | AI Healthtech | NYC | $220k-$240k + Equity

I’m working with a fast-growing Series B healthtech company in New York that is hiring a genuinely strong Staff Backend Engineer.

They’re building software for a complex healthcare environment, combining large-scale backend systems, data-heavy workflows and AI where reliability, accuracy and auditability are critical.

This is not an architecture-only Staff role.

They want someone who can:

• Own major backend systems and technical domains
• Make important architectural decisions
• Set engineering patterns used across multiple engineers and teams
• Mentor and raise the technical bar around them
• Remain genuinely hands-on with production code

The engineering problems include:

• Backend architecture and distributed systems
• Complex relational data modelling
• APIs and data-heavy workflows
• High-integrity, correctness-sensitive systems
• AI / LLM-enabled products
• RAG and agentic workflows
• Production AI infrastructure
• Reliability, observability and auditability
• Cloud infrastructure and modern engineering practices

The profile they’re looking for:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience
• Genuine formal Staff-level engineering experience
• Deep backend engineering fundamentals
• Strong architecture and system-design judgement
• Experience owning difficult production systems end-to-end
• Evidence of technical influence beyond your own individual tickets
• Strong API and relational data-modelling experience
• Someone who can make decisions with incomplete information and clearly explain the reasoning and trade-offs
• Still enjoys building rather than moving entirely into management

They are particularly interested in engineers coming from strong product technology companies, high-growth startups or recognised engineering organisations.

Experience across healthcare, fintech, AI infrastructure, data platforms or other high-integrity backend environments is useful, but the quality of the engineering environment and the scope you personally owned matter more than simply matching the industry.

Modern AI experience is valuable, particularly around:

• LLMs
• RAG
• agents
• evaluation
• production AI infrastructure
• AI-assisted software development

But this is still fundamentally a Staff Backend Engineering role, not an ML research position.

The strongest candidates tend to be able to explain:

the problem → what they personally owned → the decision they made → alternatives considered → trade-offs accepted → what improved in production.

? Manhattan, NYC

? 3 days per week in office

? $220k-$240k base + equity

? ? Staff-level individual contributor

? Series B / high-growth environment

❌ No visa sponsorship

If you’re a Staff Software Engineer with a strong backend background and want significant technical ownership without moving away from coding, drop me a message.

jacob@refactorrecruitment.com