Engineering Manager, Backend Team

Axle Health Inc.; Santa Monica (CA); In loco; USD 200.000 - 250.000; Tempo pieno

Vantaggi offerti da questo lavoro

Equity

Daily catered lunches

401k

Flexible PTO

Santa Monica HQ beach views

Descrizione del lavoro

Axle Health Inc. in Santa Monica is hiring a Backend Engineering Manager to lead our backend team of six engineers. You’ll own the technical direction, delivery, and production health of backend systems and cloud infrastructure.

This role is roughly 60% hands-on and 40% management. You’ll write and review code, mentor engineers, hire for the team, and drive architecture choices to scale our platform while meeting healthcare security requirements.

Competenze

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• 2+ years leading a team of 4-8 engineers while hands-on.
• Backend expertise in Python/Django and/or Node.js + TypeScript.
• Production ownership including on-call and incident response.
• Experience at an early or growth stage startup and hiring engineers.

Mansioni

• Hands-On Engineering: design, write, review backend code and set quality standards.
• Team Leadership and Development: manage and grow the backend team with feedback and clear expectations.
• Hiring: lead hiring for backend and DevOps roles.
• Backend Architecture: own architecture decisions for high-volume backend systems.
• Infrastructure and DevOps: own AWS, CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation.
• Reliability and Observability: own production health, monitoring, incidents and postmortems.
• Security and Compliance: ensure HIPAA compliance and SOC 2 readiness in design and deployment.
• Project and Timeline Management: scope and track concurrent backend work streams.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: collaborate with product, frontend, and interoperability teams.
• Engineering Standards: raise the bar on testing and code reviews.

Conoscenze

Backend leadership

Python/Django

Node.js

PostgreSQL

AWS

CI/CD

IaC

Mentoring engineers

On-call / incident response

Strumenti

Node.js

ExpressJS

TypeScript

GraphQL

AWS

Claude Code

Cursor

Descrizione del lavoro

Join us on our mission to empower home healthcare providers with innovative technology that drives operational excellence.

From ownership to offsites, we're building a workplace where your impact, growth, and well being come first.

Ownership

Every team member receives equity- so you benefit directly from the impact you help create in transforming home healthcare.

Growth

Join a fast-moving, tight-knit team where you'll take on meaningful work and develop new skills every day.

We offer top-tier medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401k, flexible PTO, and daily lunch at our Santa Monica HQ.

Community

From team lunches to offsites like Magic Castle and Vegas, we invest in bonding experiences that make work more rewarding.

At Axle, our values aren't just principles- they're how we work, build, and show up every day. Here's what drives us forward, together.

We seek the truth

We ask hard questions, challenge assumptions, and stay open to new perspectives - because solving big problems starts with honest thinking.

We win by working together

We own our roles and support each other to achieve our shared goals.

We love what we do

We show up with energy, commit deeply to our mission, and have fun while doing work we care about.

We build

We move fast and deliver impact. We're agile, resourceful, and determined in getting to great outcomes.

We design with empathy for all - patients, clinicians, and everyone involved in providing care.

Join us and create a world where quality care is delivered at home to anyone who needs it.

Location

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

On-site

Department

Compensation

About Us

Axle Health builds AI scheduling and workforce management software to empower in-home healthcare providers to deliver exceptional, personalized care right where patients feel most comfortable- at home.

Some of the biggest providers in the country use our software (like Cityblock Health and U Penn Health System) to improve the utilization of their field teams by 17%+, and automate the operational burden of scheduling and dispatching.

Our platform includes proprietary logistics algorithms to optimize scheduling, a mobile app for field staff, an operations dashboard for office teams, engagement and booking tools for patients, and a wide range of integrations and external APIs for modular access.

We're a team of top-tier engineers and operators, backed by $14m from top investors such as Y Combinator, Pear VC, and F-Prime, applying our intellect and logistics experience to upend how home healthcare is delivered.

About You - The Role

Axle Health builds AI-powered scheduling and workforce management software for home health organizations. The backend is what everything else depends on: the services and APIs behind every schedule, the infrastructure they run on, and the reliability our customers' clinicians count on every day. We're hiring a backend Engineering Manager to lead our backend team of six engineers. You'll report to our CTO and own the technical direction, delivery, and production health of our backend systems and cloud infrastructure.

This role is roughly 60% hands-on and 40% management. You'll write, review, and ship code alongside your team while coaching engineers, running delivery across concurrent work streams, and making key hires in your first few months. The person who thrives here wants to stay close to the code and sees that as part of how they lead. You hold a high bar for reliability and code quality, and you're comfortable making architectural calls quickly in a fast-moving startup environment.

You've done this before. You've led a backend team of similar size while staying hands-on, owned systems in production through incidents and on-call, and been the person engineers look to for technical direction. You know how to balance shipping quickly with building systems that hold up as customer volume grows.

What You'll Do

Hands-On Engineering: Spend the majority of your time designing, writing, and reviewing backend code across our services and APIs, and set the standard for quality through your own work.

Team Leadership and Development: Manage and grow a team of backend engineers through regular feedback, coaching, and clear expectations for what great work looks like.

Hiring: Lead hiring for our backend and devops opportunities.

Backend Architecture: Own architecture decisions for high-volume backend systems, including service design, data modeling, API and SDK design, and performance, so the platform scales reliably with our customers.

Infrastructure and DevOps: Own our AWS infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment automation, and drive DevOps maturity as the team grows.

Reliability and Observability: Own production health for backend systems, including monitoring, alerting, on-call, incident response, and postmortems that lead to real fixes.

Security and Compliance: Make sure backend systems and infrastructure meet healthcare data security standards, including HIPAA and SOC 2, from design through deployment.

Project and Timeline Management: Scope, sequence, and track delivery across concurrent backend work streams, keep stakeholders informed, and keep commitments realistic.

Cross-Functional Partnership: Work closely with product, front-end engineering, and our interoperability team to turn requirements into well-scoped technical plans and keep shared systems running smoothly.

Engineering Standards: Raise the bar on testing, code review, and development process so the team ships quickly without sacrificing reliability.

Requirements

Must Haves

10+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years managing a team of 4-8 engineers while staying hands-on in the code

Deep backend expertise in Python/Django and/or Node.js + TypeScript, including relational database design and performance tuning in PostgreSQL or similar

Production ownership: you've been accountable for systems in production, including on-call, incident response, observability, and postmortems

A history of technical leadership: driving architecture decisions, setting engineering standards, and building consensus on hard technical tradeoffs

Working knowledge of AWS, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code, enough to own infrastructure decisions directly

Proven ability to hire, develop, and retain strong engineers

Experience at an early or growth stage startup: comfortable building structure where none exists and making judgment calls without a playbook

Nice to Have

Experience building systems that handle HIPAA-protected data or operate in another compliance-heavy industry (SOC 2, fintech, etc.)

Hands-on experience with Terraform, Docker/Kubernetes, and Datadog or similar observability tooling

Background in scheduling, logistics, or optimization systems

Experience building data pipelines or ETL into cloud data warehouses for analytics and reporting

Experience using AI tools like Claude Code or Cursor to speed up development and review workflows

Tools You'll Use

Node.js / ExpressJS + TypeScript

GraphQL

AWS

Claude Code and Cursor

What We Offer

In addition to offering a competitive salary and equity, we want to ensure every team member has the tools they need to work to the best of their ability. To that end...

We are committed to your Ownership:

We cultivate an environment where team members feel ownership over the work they do. Everyone in an organization has big ideas and we want to hear them and implement them.

All of our employees have equity compensation. We want you to benefit from all the hard work you do in helping patients and catalyzing this shift in healthcare.

We are committed to your Wellness:

401k plan

Flexible PTO and sick days

Santa Monica HQ with 180 degree beach views and daily catered lunches

We are committed to your Growth:

Fast paced work environment geared towards professional growth

Get the chance to move roles within the organization to learn new skills and continue to make an impact

We are committed to building Community:

Monthly team events, dinners, & happy hours

Special team outings - some past events have included: yacht cruises, visits to Universal Studios, Magic Castle, and Vegas

Compensation Range: $200K - $250K

Increase clinician productivity through AI scheduling, route optimization, and automated patient engagement