Senior Backend Engineer: Data Pipelines Python & AWS Boulder

BranchLab; Boulder (CO); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 195,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Relocation stipend

Job summary

BranchLab is seeking a backend-focused Senior Software Engineer to join our Boulder-based team and help architect and build the systems powering our privacy-first, data-driven platform. This highly hands-on role combines backend engineering, distributed systems, data infrastructure, and cloud-native development.

You’ll own significant parts of the platform, designing scalable systems to process, transform, and query large volumes of anonymized healthcare data and building the services that turn

Qualifications

• Strong backend software engineering experience, particularly with Python.
• Hands-on experience building production data pipelines with Apache Spark.
• Experience processing large datasets in distributed environments and strong SQL skills.
• Experience with cloud-native systems, AWS, including Kubernetes, EMR, S3, and Athena.
• Experience with Apache Airflow.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, data processing, performance, and reliability.
• Experience leading technical projects or small engineering teams while remaining hands-on.
• Strong technical judgment, communication skills, and a pragmatic approach to building maintainable production systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own backend systems and APIs using Python.
• Build and optimize large-scale data-processing pipelines using Apache Spark.
• Design systems for ingesting, transforming, aggregating, and querying large datasets.
• Architect and operate distributed workloads on AWS using technologies such as EKS, EMR, and Airflow.
• Lead small engineering teams or project workstreams while remaining a hands-on contributor.
• Break down complex initiatives, drive technical decisions, coordinate execution, and help remove blockers.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, debugging, and day-to-day technical guidance.
• Improve the reliability, scalability, performance, security, and observability of production systems.

Skills

Python

Distributed data pipelines

SQL

AWS

Apache Spark

Apache Airflow

Kubernetes

S3

EMR

Athena

Tools

Apache Spark

Apache Airflow

Kubernetes

Amazon EMR

Amazon S3

Amazon Athena

Job description

BranchLab is seeking a backend-focused Senior Software Engineer to join our Boulder-based team and help architect and build the systems powering our privacy-first, data-driven platform. This highly hands-on role combines backend engineering, distributed systems, data infrastructure, and cloud-native development.

You’ll own significant parts of the platform, designing scalable systems to process, transform, and query large volumes of anonymized healthcare data and building the services that turn