Senior Software Engineer, Data

Sidecar Health is redefining health insurance. Our mission is to make excellent healthcare affordable and accessible for everyone. We know that to accomplish this lofty mission, we need driven people who will make things happen.

The passionate people who make up Sidecar Health’s team come from all over, with backgrounds as tech leaders, policy makers, healthcare professionals, and beyond. And they all have one thing in common—the desire to fix a broken system and make it more personalized, affordable, and transparent.

If you want to use your talents to transform healthcare in the United States, come join us!

About the Role

This is a high-impact individual contributor role on our platform team, building large-scale data pipelines and distributed systems that power Sidecar Health's core product. You'll take full ownership of complex, ambiguous problems from architecture through production — designing, shipping, and running the systems you build. If you're a strong senior engineer who thrives on end-to-end ownership and wants your work to matter in healthcare, this is the role for you.

MUST BE BASED IN CALIFORNIA

What You'll Do

Design and own high-throughput, distributed data pipelines and platform infrastructure from concept through production

Decompose large, ambiguous initiatives into structured, executable plans that the team can move on in parallel

Write production-grade Python — strongly typed, well-structured, and built to last — not scripts or notebooks

Optimize SQL at scale: query tuning, data modeling, and understanding execution plans

Architect across boundaries — defining contracts between frontend, backend services, and infrastructure

Be a technical resource and mentor for junior engineers, and partner directly with leadership on roadmap and technical decisions

Instrument systems for observability — knowing what to monitor, not just how to read a dashboard

What You'll Bring

5+ years of professional software engineering experience with full ownership of production systems

Strong proficiency in Python (mypy, Pydantic, proper abstractions) and SQL at scale

Deep experience building and operating distributed data pipelines and event-driven architectures

Hands-on AWS experience: Lambda, SQS, IAM, CloudWatch, and cost-aware design

Docker as a first-class practice

Habitual, fluent use of AI tools (Claude, Cursor, etc.) as part of your daily workflow

Observability experience with Datadog or equivalent

Familiarity with FastAPI, Django, SQLAlchemy, Celery, or Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, CDK) is a strong plus

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field

The Reality

This is a startup. We move fast. We prioritize impact over polish. We expect:

Bias for action — ship, learn, iterate

Ownership — you design it, build it, run it

Pragmatism — solve real problems, not theoretical ones

Resilience — ambiguity comes with the territory

Healthcare is complex and broken. The work matters.

What You'll Get

Competitive salary, bonus opportunity, and equity package

Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits

A 401k retirement plan

Paid vacation and company holidays

Opportunity to make an impact at a rapidly growing mission-driven company transforming healthcare in the U.S.

Sidecar Health is an Equal Opportunity employer committed to building a diverse team. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability status.