Senior Software Engineer, Performance

Turquoise; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Equity options

Healthcare plan

Unlimited PTO

401(k) matching

Fully remote

Home setup budget

In-person summits

Wellness stipend

Learning stipend

Job summary

Turquoise Health seeks a data performance engineer to optimize production data systems powering Analyze and Search products. You will diagnose slow queries, design data architecture changes, and collaborate with Product, frontend, and backend engineers to improve responsiveness and reduce costs on a ClickHouse-based stack.

This is a fully remote, US-based role. You will build benchmarks, instrument metrics, and promote scalable patterns as the data product platform expands across healthcare

Qualifications

• 5+ years building and optimizing production data systems, data-intensive applications, or analytical products.
• Advanced SQL and strong Python (or another general-purpose language).
• Hands-on experience optimizing analytical workloads in column-oriented databases or data warehouses.
• A hypothesis-driven approach to performance work: you use query plans, profiling, benchmarks, and production telemetry to define the problem, set a baseline, test alternatives, and quantify the result in production.
• The ability to reason across system boundaries (databases, APIs, backend services, client request patterns, product interactions) and the product judgment to know when changing the experience beats changing the data system.

Responsibilities

• Diagnose and fix performance issues across the product and data stack.
• Own investigations to produce measured root causes and production fixes.
• Track latency, throughput, concurrency, and infrastructure cost, focusing on datastore efficiency (we run on ClickHouse Cloud).
• Build representative benchmarks for the filter, dataset, and workflow combinations that matter most.
• Evaluate the performance impact of upstream dataset changes before they reach production.
• Design and evaluate data architecture changes, such as restructuring tables, precomputing results, and changing indexes.
• Partner with Product, frontend, and backend engineers to adapt product behavior to the data, using techniques like request batching, debouncing, caching, and pagination.
• Prototype competing solutions, communicate their tradeoffs clearly, and validate the chosen approach in production.
• Improve performance instrumentation, monitoring, and regression detection across data-powered product experiences.
• Establish reusable patterns as the Data Product platform becomes a supporting layer for more products and teams.

Skills

5+ yrs exp

Advanced SQL

Python (or similar)

Data warehousing

Hypothesis-driven

System thinking

Tools

ClickHouse

Job description

This is a fully remote role within the United States. For our Analyze and Search products, speed is part of the product. Our customers filter, compare, and benchmark across large healthcare pricing datasets, and a slow query changes how much they trust and use what we've built. You'll make that experience fast, scalable, and cost-efficient as datasets grow and more products build on the same platform.

The challenge is that performance depends on the combination of filter, dataset, and workflow, not on any single query. A dataset update can shift latency before anyone notices, and the best fix is sometimes a better data model and sometimes a better product behavior. You'll investigate, benchmark, prototype, and ship across the path from ClickHouse to the API to the screen, working directly with Product, frontend, and backend engineers.

This is a data and product performance role, not a load-testing, QA, or low-level systems role. If you like turning "this feels slow" into a baseline, a hypothesis, and a number that moves in production, you'll enjoy it here.

Responsibilities

Diagnose and fix

Own performance investigations across the product and data stack, taking a slow query or poor user experience to a measured root cause and a production fix.

Example: a critical filter and data-source combination is now x% faster in production.

Track latency, throughput, concurrency, and infrastructure cost, with a focus on datastore efficiency (we run on ClickHouse Cloud).

Example: a product workflow now uses z% fewer ClickHouse resources without compromising the user experience.

Anticipate

Build representative benchmarks for the filter, dataset, and workflow combinations that matter most.

Evaluate the performance impact of upstream dataset changes before they reach production.

Example: an incoming change is expected to increase latency by y%, and we have a mitigation plan before launch.

Assess future product requests and recommend technical or product approaches that balance functionality, responsiveness, scalability, and cost.

Design and ship

Design and evaluate data architecture changes, such as restructuring tables, precomputing results, and changing indexes.

Partner with Product, frontend, and backend engineers to adapt product behavior to the data, using techniques like request batching, debouncing, caching, and pagination.

Prototype competing solutions, communicate their tradeoffs clearly, and validate the chosen approach in production.

Build for the long term

Improve performance instrumentation, monitoring, and regression detection across data-powered product experiences.

Establish reusable patterns as the Data Product platform becomes a supporting layer for more products and teams.

What you'll bring to the role

• 5+ years building and optimizing production data systems, data-intensive applications, or analytical products
• Advanced SQL and strong Python (or another general-purpose language)
• Hands-on experience optimizing analytical workloads in column-oriented databases or data warehouses
• A hypothesis-driven approach to performance work: you use query plans, profiling, benchmarks, and production telemetry to define the problem, set a baseline, test alternatives, and quantify the result in production
• The ability to reason across system boundaries (databases, APIs, backend services, client request patterns, product interactions) and the product judgment to know when changing the experience beats changing the data system

Bonus points

• Experience with ClickHouse
• Experience contributing to data-heavy search, filtering, analytics, or reporting products
• Experience with healthcare specific data types: claims, contract rates, revenue cycle, medical billing, or healthcare pricing experience

Benefits

• Competitive pay with equity options
• Stellar healthcare plan options, including Medical, Dental, and Vision, with FSA, DCFSA, and HSA options
• Company-sponsored disability and life insurance
• Unlimited PTO
• 401(k) with 4% matching
• Fully remote work and flexible working hours
• $750 work-from-home setup budget
• Paid biannual in-person company summits
• Quarterly $150 co-hanging stipend to meet with coworkers
• Monthly $100 health and wellness benefit
• Generous paid family leave
• Annual $1,200 learning and development stipend

About Turquoise Health

Turquoise Health is a Series C price transparency platform for finance leaders across healthcare. Backed by a16z, Oak HC/FT, Adams Street, Yosemite, Bessemer Venture Partners, and others, we power price transparency for 300+ enterprise organizations and are building the infrastructure for a more open, efficient healthcare marketplace. We're a remote-first, US-based team that values transparency, empathy, inclusivity, creativity, and ownership.

We operate on US business hours and work with clients entirely based in the US. For this role, we are seeking US-based candidates.

We strongly encourage BIPOC, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ folks to apply for any open roles of interest. Healthcare affects all people differently, but it significantly affects those in underserved communities. With a robust, diverse team, we are stronger and better equipped to change the future of healthcare for all.

Work Authorization

This role requires current authorization to work in the United States. Turquoise does not sponsor employment visas (H-1B, PERM, etc.) or assume sponsorship