Backend Software Engineer

Sitka brings specialty expertise to doctors and patients in a way they understand, in a setting they control and on devices they already carry with them.  Doctors gain rapid, on-demand access to our network of specialists through our unique technology platform.  Patients receive personalized reviews of their medical data with our experts providing empathetic guidance through life-changing medical events.  Patients love it, doctors love it, even insurers love it.

Software and medicine have traditionally not gotten along. Building software to replicate centuries old medical workflows isn’t fun and, more importantly, isn’t what the industry needs. Sitka is founded on the premise that meaningful improvement in medicine requires new systems enabling convenient, conversational workflows, not the tedious and documentation-heavy processes of the past.  The current systems don’t work for anyone, so it’s time for something radically different.

As a small startup, there are no big-company cog-in-the-machine roles. Everything and everyone matters, so we hire with that in mind. We value diversity, not just because building services for diverse populations requires a diverse team, but because we personally feel it's the right thing to do.

About the job

Sitka engineers progressively bring order to the chaos of medicine. We work closely with our clinical practitioners and patients, rapidly iterating on the product and workflow to solve real problems in real clinics.

Multiparty workflow systems are complicated and challenging in ways that the uninitiated may not appreciate. Any sufficiently complicated workflow system requires building for intervention: when the unexpected happens, your system must be resilient enough and sufficiently well-constructed to allow humans to intervene without demolishing your carefully designed and automated state flow.

You’d report to the CTO, with tremendous flexibility to define the shape of the product, technical architecture and company itself. As an early engineer, you will be a critical member of the team, with your work directly affecting the success or failure of the company. The scope of your potential impact is limited only by your ambition and ability to get things done.

Requirements

• You like writing python and have at least 3 years of experience doing so.
• You've designed and implemented complicated data architectures for a real-world service in either RDBMS or NoSQL storage systems (or both for extra points).
• You understand modern web architecture - how the pieces fit together, how to build robust and reliable services, how to manage complexity as a service grows.
• You like learning new things, teaching what you know to others and generally aren’t a jerk about it.
• You’re capable of solving whole problems with lots of ambiguity. We’re a startup doing things that nobody has done before. This means building things with imperfect information and building for adaptation when your assumptions are wrong. It’s not for everyone.
• You care about building an engineering culture based on diversity, respect, recognition and trust.

Extra credit!

• You're a senior engineer. If you have 15+ years of experience building complex systems, great!
• You’re a Full Stack™ engineer -- however you want to define that.
• You’ve worked on complicated, multiparty workflow systems.
  
• You’ve dealt with HIPAA and survived with your sanity intact (intactness of sanity is strictly optional).
• You’ve built systems on AWS.
• You’ve worked on streaming video.

How to apply

Email your resume to