API Backend Developer

Elsevier; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Elsevier is seeking a Backend API’s and Integrations Software Engineer III to help build a generative-AI-powered clinical decision support tool. You will design distributed services, configure Kong APIM, and own API lifecycles with OpenAPI and tests, while implementing OpenAI specs and secure data flows.

The role focuses on building a scalable backend with REST/gRPC integrations, FHIR mappings, and cloud/Kubernetes deployments to support fast, evidence-based clinical answers.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional backend software engineering experience.
• Hands-on experience with API gateway technologies (Kong APIM) and declarative YAML config; CI/CD integration.
• Understanding of microservices, stateless design, retries and circuit breakers.
• Networking basics (TLS/mTLS, HTTP/2, DNS) and debugging tools (cURL, traceroute).
• FHIR familiarity or HL7 adapters and data facade concepts.
• Testing: unit, integration and contract testing; familiarity with YAML-based workflows.
• Cloud or containerized environments (Docker/Kubernetes) and related ops.

Responsibilities

• Design and build distributed services with scalability and fault tolerance in mind.
• Configure API Platform and Kong APIM, including routes, auth, rate limiting, and audits.
• Develop and maintain FHIR data facades and backend integrations (REST, gRPC, messaging).
• Own API lifecycle: OpenAPI specs, implementation, tests, versioning, and SLO-driven operations.
• Create OpenAI specs, mocks, and validation pipelines; ensure secure, compliant code.

Skills

Backend development

Distributed systems

OpenAPI / API design

CI/CD pipelines

Networking fundamentals

Security principles

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

REST / gRPC

Job description

Backend API’s and Integrations Software Engineer III

About the team, this team is building a generative-AI-powered clinical decision support tool designed specifically to help healthcare professionals quickly find trusted, evidence-based answers at the point of care. It combines a massive curated medical knowledge base with conversational AI so clinicians can ask questions in natural language and get concise, clinically relevant responses backed by real scientific evidence.

Responsibilities

Design & Build Distributed Services

• Applying patterns for scaling, fault tolerance, idempotency, and backpressure in distributed environments.

API Platform & Kong APIM

• Configuring and managing Kong Gateway (routes, services, plugins, rate limiting, auth, mTLS, logging) via declarative config (YAML) and CI/CD.
• Implementing gateway policies for security, traffic control, blue/green/canary releases, and zero-downtime migrations.

Integrations & Data Facades

• Building and maintaining a FHIR data facade that maps internal domain data to FHIR resources (read/search/transform), ensuring correctness and performance.
• Developing backend integrations with downstream systems (REST, gRPC, messaging/queues) and handle schema/contract evolution.
• Owning the API lifecycle: design (OpenAPI), implementation, automated testing (unit/integration/contract), versioning, and SLO-driven operations.
• Creating and maintaining OpenAI specs, mocks, and validation pipelines.

Security & Compliance

• Implementing OAuth2/OIDC flows, token introspection, and service-to-service auth. Apply secure coding practices and least-privilege network policies; partner with InfoSec on reviews.

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of Professional Experience in backend software engineering.
• API Gateway / Kong APIM: Hands-on experience configuring routes, plugins, auth, rate limiting, and declarative YAML configs; CI/CD integration.
• Distributed Systems: Understanding of microservices fundamentals: statelessness, service discovery, retries/circuit breakers, caching.
• Networking Fundamentals: TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/mTLS, HTTP/2/HTTP/1.1, proxies, load balancing, and common troubleshooting (cURL, traceroute, etc.).
• Data & FHIR Facade: Experience working with HL7 FHIR or adapters; familiarity with FHIR resource modeling and transformations (e.g., Patient, Observation, Encounter).
• Testing & Quality: Unit, integration, and contract testing; test automation and CI/CD pipelines (YAML-based workflows).
• Cloud & Ops: Experience deploying and operating services in a cloud or containerized environment (Docker/Kubernetes).