Senior Software Engineer - NBA

Humana Inc; Tennessee; Hybrid; USD 107,000 - 147,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus incentive plan

Job summary

Humana, Inc. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to design, implement, and operate stateful services that power real-time decisioning and personalization platforms. You will build robust state machines, idempotent workflows, and automated tooling for reliability in high-concurrency environments.

You’ll collaborate with platform teams, apply AI-assisted tooling, and champion observability and auditability. This hybrid role requires some in-office work and eligible for a bonus incentive plan.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a computer science or related field required.
• Hands-on experience with state machines and lifecycle management.
• Experience with transactional state stores and idempotent design.
• Proficiency in one or more of Java, Kotlin, Go, Python.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and concurrency.
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and operate stateful services for real-time decisioning and personalization.
• Develop state machines for lifecycle transitions and validation of permissible states.
• Ensure exactly-once processing semantics and robust idempotency controls.
• Implement outbox-like patterns for reliable side effects and event delivery.
• Build observable, auditable systems with strong tracing and monitoring.
• Collaborate with platform teams and lead architectural reviews.

Skills

State machine modeling

Exactly-once processing

Transactional state stores

Idempotent API design

Distributed systems

Java/Kotlin/Go/Python

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Become a part of our caring community We are seeking an accomplished Senior Software Engineer to design, implement, and operate mission-critical stateful services that form the backbone of real-time, automated decisioning and personalization platforms. These systems are responsible for maintaining authoritative state, orchestrating lifecycle transitions, and ensuring reliable downstream effects—often in high-concurrency, low-latency environments. This position is ideal for engineers with a strong grasp of state machines, idempotency, distributed systems, and “exactly-once” execution semantics. You will also employ advanced AI-assisted and agentic engineering tools to drive correctness, velocity, resilience, and scalability.

Key Responsibilities

• State Machine Architecture & Implementation Design, build, and maintain explicit state machines governing: Lifecycle transitions (e.g., open → in progress → completed → suppressed) Validation of permissible transitions Time-based and event-driven changes Ensure state machines are: Clearly modeled and not hidden in code logic Deterministic, reproducible, and auditable Easily understood and testable Robust against illegal or duplicate transitions through comprehensive validation
• Transactional State Memory & Exactly-Once Processing Architect and manage transactional state stores serving as the single source of truth Support safe, high-concurrency read/write operations Uphold system invariants across partial failures and recovery scenarios Implement robust idempotency controls so: Requests can be safely retried Commands execute at most once Duplicate events do not compromise state integrity Develop APIs and workflows resilient to retries, restarts, and replay events
• Reliable Side Effects via Outbox Pattern Employ the outbox pattern to guarantee atomicity of state updates and event publication Prevent loss or duplication of side effects Maintain clear separation between state mutation and downstream event delivery Facilitate replay, backfill, and recovery operations without breaching state guarantees Integrate seamlessly with messaging and streaming platforms, ensuring fault tolerance
• Distributed Systems & Concurrency Management Design for correctness under concurrent updates, network partitions, partial failures, and service redeployments Apply expertise in: Idempotency keys Optimistic and pessimistic locking strategies Event ordering and causality Balance rigorous correctness with performance and latency requirements
• AI-Assisted & Agentic Engineering Practices Leverage AI-powered and agentic tools to: Automatically generate and validate state transition tests Probe edge cases and concurrency challenges Assist in code reviews, refactoring, and documentation Accelerate debugging, incident analysis, and root cause discovery Use AI responsibly to enhance productivity while maintaining clarity and system integrity
• Observability, Auditability & Trust Engineer services with robust observability through: Structured logging, metrics, and alerting Distributed tracing Ensure all state transitions and emitted events are: Fully traceable and reproducible Auditable for compliance and investigative needs
• Collaboration & Technical Leadership Partner with platform, data, and quality engineering teams to assure end-to-end reliability Participate in architecture and design reviews to elevate system quality standards Mentor and guide engineers on best practices for safe, reliable, and maintainable distributed systems Use your skills to make an impact

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field
• 6+ years of experience in backend or platform engineering
• Demonstrated hands‑on expertise with: State machine modeling and lifecycle management
• Transactional state stores
• Idempotent API and workflow design
• In‑depth understanding of: Exactly‑once or effectively once processing
• Failure modes in distributed environments
• Proficiency in one or more contemporary languages (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Go, Python)
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools for productivity and code quality

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with outbox, transactional messaging, or event sourcing patterns
• Familiarity with low-latency, high-throughput architectures
• Operational experience in systems requiring strict auditability and correctness
• Background in regulated or mission‑critical domains
• Success in previous roles requiring rapid debugging and incident response

Success Indicators

• State transitions are precise, deterministic, and resilient to retries
• Side effects reliably occur exactly once, even during failures or replays
• Systems recover gracefully from crashes and redeployments
• AI‑driven tooling decreases defect rates and expedites debugging
• The state layer is trusted as the definitive source of truth across engineering teams

Why This Role is Critical

In contemporary automated platforms, correctness and reliability hinge on the integrity of state, not just requests. This role ensures that every state transition and side effect is executed once—and only once—providing a solid foundation for trust, reliability, compliance, and scalability throughout the system.

Qualified candidates are required to currently live in, or be willing to move to, a commutable distance for a hybrid (~3 days in-office) work arrangement.

Location options are currently:

• Washington, D.C. metropolitan area
• Louisville, KY metropolitan area
• Denver, CO metropolitan area
• Dallas, TX metropolitan area
• Ft. Lauderdale, FL metropolitan area

Work Style

Remote/Hybrid. Occasional travel to Humana's offices for training or meetings may be required.

Work Hours: Typical business hours are Monday-Friday, 8 hours/day, 5 days/week—some flexibility might be possible, depending on business needs. Very minimal travel might be required for training, meetings, and/or conferences.

Scheduled Weekly Hours 40 Pay Range

The compensation range below reflects a good faith estimate of starting base pay for full time (40 hours per week) employment at the time of posting. The pay range may be higher or lower based on geographic location and individual pay will vary based on demonstrated job related skills, knowledge, experience, education, certifications, etc. $106,900 - $147,000 per year This job is eligible for a bonus incentive plan. This incentive opportunity is based upon company and/or individual performance.

Description of Benefits

Humana, Inc. and its affiliated subsidiaries (collectively, “Humana”) offers competitive benefits that support whole-person well-being. Associate benefits are designed to encourage personal wellness and smart healthcare decisions for you and your family while also knowing your life extends outside of work. Among our benefits, Humana provides medical, dental and vision benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan, time off (including paid time off, company and personal holidays, paid parental and caregiver leave), short-term and long-term disability, life insurance and many other opportunities.

Application Deadline

08-30-2026

About us

Humana: Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) is a leading U.S. healthcare company. Through our Humana insurance services and our CenterWell healthcare services, we make it easier for the millions of people we serve to achieve their best health – delivering the care and service they need, when they need it. These efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare and Medicaid, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large. Learn more about what we offer atHumana.comand atCenterWell.com.

Equal Opportunity Employer

It is the policy of Humana not to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability or protected veteran status.

It is also the policy of Humana to take affirmative action, in compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and VEVRAA, to employ and to advance in employment individuals with disability or protected veteran status, and to base all employment decisions only on valid job requirements.

This policy shall apply to all employment actions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, upgrading, promotion, transfer, demotion, layoff, recall, termination, rates of pay or other forms of compensation and selection for training, including apprenticeship, at all levels of employment.