Sr. Software Engineer I - Backend

About the Company:

Octave is a modern behavioral health practice creating a new standard for care delivery that’s both high-quality and accessible. With in-person and virtual clinics in multiple states, the company offers evidence-based individual, couples, and family therapy, while pioneering relationships with payers to make care more affordable through insurance. By raising the bar on how care is delivered and how providers are supported, we are building a sustainable system that values equity, affordability, and effectiveness.

About the Role:

The Sr. Engineer I - Backend plays a key role in designing, building, and maintaining robust, scalable systems that support clients seeking care, providers delivering care, and the operational infrastructure that enables them. As a senior member of our growing team, you will work remotely, leveraging Python (Django/FastAPI), gRPC, and GraphQL to architect and implement backend services, streamline operations, and maintain integrations with a variety of partners. You will take ownership of significant features or subsystems, influence technical decisions, mentor peers, and help shape best practices across the team, all while contributing to mission-driven work in the healthcare space.

Responsibilities Include:

• Technical skills: 
  • Design, develop, and implement scalable and robust backend systems and APIs using Python.
  • Optimize database schemas, queries, and overall performance while maintaining security and data integrity.
  • Lead debugging, profiling, and monitoring of backend services, proactively identifying and addressing issues before they impact users.
  • Participate in technical design and architecture discussions, making well-reasoned tradeoffs for system performance, scalability, and maintainability without guidance.
  • Drive adoption of best practices for testing, code quality, documentation, and observability across backend systems.
  • Own features or subsystems end-to-end, from design through deployment and monitoring, ensuring robust, maintainable implementations.
  • Produce clean, readable, and well-tested code, making thoughtful decisions about when to add comments versus relying on self-documenting patterns.
  • Serve as a subject-matter expert in a portion of the backend domain, providing guidance, code review, and mentorship to other engineers.
• Teamwork: 
  • Collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, and cross-functional teams to translate requirements into scalable backend solutions.
  • Partner with frontend and other teams to ensure seamless integration and high-quality delivery of full-stack features.
  • Mentor and support engineers through pairing, design reviews, and technical guidance.
  • Proactively surface risks, ambiguities, or technical limitations in project requirements, contributing to early course correction.
  • Communicate effectively, clearly, and concisely with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Contribute to team practices, processes, and documentation to improve efficiency and knowledge sharing.

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 5 years of experience building robust and scalable backend applications.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and continuous deployment in production.
• Experience working with healthcare, healthcare technology, and clinical staff, or other regulated industries.
• Proficiency with gRPC, Protobuf, and other modern API protocols, including designing and integrating services across distributed systems.
• Experience with relational database systems like PostgreSQL or MySQL.
• Experience integrating and synchronizing data with third party APIs.
• Experience with continuous delivery and troubleshooting production code.
• Deep expertise in Python and at least one major web framework, with experience designing, building, and maintaining production-grade applications.
• Proven track record deploying and operating enterprise Python applications in production, with a focus on reliability, scalability, and maintainability.
• Strong commitment to writing high-quality, well-tested, and readable code, with a habit of improving codebases and processes over time.
• Proficiency in debugging, monitoring, and optimizing systems, and the ability to make thoughtful architectural decisions in complex domains.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, able to partner with engineers, clinical staff, and operations teams to solve open-ended problems and deliver impactful solutions.
• Passion for mission-driven work, with an interest in applying engineering skills to improve healthcare systems and outcomes.
• Experience mentoring or guiding peers, providing technical leadership, and helping the team adopt best pra