Senior Backend Engineer

Isla; United States; Remote; USD 90,000 - 103,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first

25 days annual leave

Birthday off

Quarterly meal on us (£75)

Private medical insurance

Enhanced parental leave

Annual learning budget

Team socials (London)

Job summary

Isla Health is hiring a Senior Node.js Engineer to design, scope, build and deploy features for the Digital Pathway Platform. You will own end-to-end components, work with Product and Design, and help scale healthcare data flows.

The role is remote-first, with flexibility and opportunities to collaborate across the UK, EU and beyond. Expect 5+ years of backend experience, strong Node.js/TypeScript skills, and cloud infra expertise.

Qualifications

• Proficient in Node.js and TypeScript backend development.
• Experience with cloud platforms and scalable infra.
• Familiarity with CI/CD and automated testing.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy features for the Digital Pathway Platform.
• Own production services, monitoring and reliability improvements.
• Collaborate with product and design to deliver user-focused solutions.
• Support and improve cloud infrastructure.

Skills

Node.js

TypeScript

GCP

Terraform

CI/CD

Jest

REST APIs

SOAP APIs

Docker

Cloud Run

Cloud Functions

IAM

GitHub Actions

Networking (VPC)

Subnets

VPN

Unit testing

Tools

Datastore

Kubernetes

Job description

Senior Node.js & Cloud Engineer

Role details: This is a full time role (40 hours per week)

Salary: €80,000 - 92,000

Location: Ireland (Remote - work from home)

Who we are

Isla Health is a venture-backed health-tech startup, supporting our partners across the UK, EU and internationally. We have built a new category of healthcare technology which we refer to as the Digital Pathway Platform (DPP). Founded in 2019, we now support 25% of NHS Trusts and see 2 million submissions on the platform every year.

As a company we are all laser focused on enabling a scalable model of care which empowers healthcare staff and improves patient outcomes. The DPP supports this by setting up digital pathways which are remote-first and asynchronous. As pathways harness sophisticated automation, clinical algorithms and intelligent co-horting, patients always take the optimised route through their pathway, thereby delivering a step change in clinical productivity.

The role

We’re looking for a Senior Node.js Engineer to work closely with our product & client facing teams, understand our customer challenges, and ship things quickly to test & learn. You will design, scope, build and deploy new features quickly for our users.

You’ll have high ownership over whole areas of the codebase and who features end-to-end, contributing to a platform that supports millions of patient interactions.You should be biased towards pace and experimentation and excited about solving the big challenges in healthcare.

What you’ll do

• Build the platform that will allow our clients to look after their patients, integrating new data sources to drive our DPP, managing those complex clinical data flows to ensure that data is where it needs to be, and then writing updates back to 3rd party systems.
• Own services in production, including monitoring, debugging, and improving reliability over time
• Collaborate with product and design to deliver user-focused solutions
• Support and improve our cloud infrastructure

Outcomes you’ll be responsible for

• Deliver high-quality, maintainable backend systems that scale with growing usage
• Take ownership of features/services and ensure they are reliable in production
• Support and mentor other engineers through collaboration and code review
• Champion technical excellence and continuous improvement by driving best practices in software development, DevOps, and cloud infrastructure

Team

You will be joining a lean & high performing engineering organisation. We value pace, but also hold really high quality standards for each other.

• The structure: You will be a member of our Backend/Platform team. As a Senior Engineer, you will report directly to our Platform/Backend Lead.
• Cross-functional collaboration: You’ll work in a tight loop with our Product, Design, and Frontend teams.

Our tech & tools:

We lean into modern, scalable infrastructure (Node.js, TypeScript, GCP). We prioritise tools that enable velocity - such as Terraform and automated CI/CD. We also lean heavily into AI, and you’ll be able (encouraged) to use whatever tools you need to scale your own and the team’s workflows

• As a person:

  • You’re a proactive Engineer who enjoys collaborating with all areas of the business and our customers directly
  • You’re Passionate about solving complex problems in a team of brilliant people
  • You bring empathy and enthusiasm to help the wider team progress through mentoring. You’ll bring strong experience in GCP and backend design, and support others through collaboration and knowledge sharing
  • You’ll be super curious & love pushing the boundaries of agentic coding & scaling your own abilities

• As a developer:

  • you’ll have professional experience as a Senior Developer

    • Ideally in a start up
    • Ideally ~5+ years as a developer
  • On that journey, you’ll have worked with lots of variety (exhaustive list below, not all required!):
    • Writing code: Deep understanding of best practices when building Node.js applications with Typescript & experience integrating with a variety of APIs, e.g. REST & SOAP
    • Cloud experience: Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure. Ideally Google Cloud Platform, although not required. E.g: Datastore, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, IAM, Docker
    • Networking: Solid understanding of VPCs, subnets, private VPNs
    • CI/CD: automation, such as github actions
    • Infrastructure
    • Proven experience with unit testing frameworks such as Jest

Work from home - this is a remote first role

Flexible working times

Work abroad for up to 90 days per year

25 days annual leave on top of Irish bank holidays. Plus, take your birthday off and another significant day off of your choice

Quarterly meal on us enjoy up to £75 to treat friends or family

Private medical insurance

Enhanced parental leave to support your family when it matters most

Quarterly team socials based in London

An annual learning budget to support your growth

Work with purpose - you’ll be delivering social impact through improved patient healthcare

Join at an exciting stage - we’re a well-funded, rapidly growing health tech company tackling a global challenge

Help shape the future of Isla - your ideas won’t disappear into layers of management. You’ll have real ownership, real impact, and help define how we grow the business

Interviewing with us will be split into 4 stages (all conducted virtually):

A screening interview with someone from our People team - 15 minutes

A technical task you will complete independently

A technical interview with two of our Backend Engineers - 1 hour

A final interview with our Director of Engineering and Co-founder/CTO- 30 minutes

Diversity and Inclusion

Isla is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to building an inclusive and diverse team. We encourage all qualified candidates to apply. Isla does not discriminate against anyone on the basis of their race, gender, disability, religion, national origin, age, or any other protected category. We choose to celebrate our team’s differences and see them as one of our most valuable assets.

Recruitment is not one-size-fits-all and we’re happy to tailor our hiring process to better meet the needs of individual applicants. Please email [e-mail] with any requests for support.

Using AI tools for your application

Most of our roles include several questions as part of the application process. AI tools might be useful in structuring or proof-reading your cover letter or your application answers. We encourage you to do your own research though to fully understand the company and the role you are applying to as you will be asked questions during any interview. Generic AI-generated answers are also really obvious. We’d like to get an idea of how you think early in the process; you should also make sure Isla is the right fit for you before you apply. Make AI tools work for you, not against you!