Sr. Software Engineer I - Backend

About the Company:

Octave is a modern behavioral health practice creating a new standard for care delivery that’s both high-quality and accessible. With in-person and virtual clinics in multiple states, the company offers evidence-based individual, couples, and family therapy, while pioneering relationships with payers to make care more affordable through insurance. By raising the bar on how care is delivered and how providers are supported, we are building a sustainable system that values equity, affordability, and effectiveness.

About the Role:

The Sr. Engineer I - Backend plays a key role in designing, building, and maintaining robust, scalable systems that support clients seeking care, providers delivering care, and the operational infrastructure that enables them. As a senior member of our growing team, you will work remotely, leveraging Python (Django/FastAPI), gRPC, and GraphQL to architect and implement backend services, streamline operations, and maintain integrations with a variety of partners. You will take ownership of significant features or subsystems, influence technical decisions, mentor peers, and help shape best practices across the team, all while contributing to mission-driven work in the healthcare space.

Responsibilities Include:

Technical skills:

• Design, develop, and implement scalable and robust backend systems and APIs using Python
• Optimize database schemas, queries, and overall performance while maintaining security and data integrity.
• Lead debugging, profiling, and monitoring of backend services, proactively identifying and addressing issues before they impact users.
• Participate in technical design and architecture discussions, making well-reasoned tradeoffs for system performance, scalability, and maintainability without guidance.
• Drive adoption of best practices for testing, code quality, documentation, and observability across backend systems.
• Own features or subsystems end-to-end, from design through deployment and monitoring, ensuring robust, maintainable implementations.
• Produce clean, readable, and well-tested code, making thoughtful decisions about when to add comments versus relying on self-documenting patterns.
• Serve as a subject-matter expert in a portion of the backend domain, providing guidance, code review, and mentorship to other engineers.

Teamwork:

• Collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, and cross-functional teams to translate requirements into scalable backend solutions.
• Partner with frontend and other teams to ensure seamless integration and high-quality delivery of full-stack features.
• Mentor and support engineers through pairing, design reviews, and technical guidance.
• Proactively surface risks, ambiguities, or technical limitations in project requirements, contributing to early course correction.
• Communicate effectively, clearly, and concisely with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Contribute to team practices, processes, and documentation to improve efficiency and knowledge sharing.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Minimum of 5 years of experience building robust and scalable backend applications.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and continuous deployment in production.
• Experience working with healthcare, healthcare technology, and clinical staff, or other regulated industries.
• Proficiency with gRPC, Protobuf, and other modern API protocols, including designing and integrating services across distributed systems.
• Experience with relational database systems like PostgreSQL or MySQL.
• Experience integrating and synchronizing data with third party APIs.
• Experience with continuous delivery and troubleshooting production code.
• Deep expertise in Python and at least one major web framework, with experience designing, building, and maintaining production-grade applications.
• Proven track record deploying and operating enterprise Python applications in production, with a focus on reliability, scalability, and maintainability.
• Strong commitment to writing high-quality, well-tested, and readable code, with a habit of improving codebases and processes over time.
• Proficiency in debugging, monitoring, and optimizing systems, and the ability to make thoughtful architectural decisions in complex domains.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, able to partner with engineers, clinical staff, and operations teams to solve open-ended problems and deliver impactful solutions.
• Passion for mission-driven work, with an interest in applying engineering skills to improve healthcare systems and outcomes.
• Experience mentoring or guiding peers, providing technical leadership, and helping the team adopt best practices and thoughtful processes.
• Ability to take ownership of significant features or subsystems, drive them to completion, and proactively identify opportunities for improvement.

Octave's Company Values:

The below values drive our day-to-day operations.

• We’re human beings first. We operate with empathy and kindness – with our clients, with our collaborators, and with ourselves.
• People deserve better than status quo. We’re willing to tackle the intractable problems, no matter how big, because someone should. We ask big questions, we craft big solutions, and we challenge ourselves and others to make it happen.
• No bystanders. No stars. No tourists. Each person has been selected to be here, and with that comes a responsibility to bring your expertise, share your ideas, and help make this company better.
• Partnership paves the path ahead. We don’t operate in a silo, internally or externally. To transform the system, we believe in working with others to create something bigger, better, and stronger.
• Quality is crucial at scale. Quality is core to our business, and we refuse to sacrifice it as we grow.
• Progress is a process. In the pursuit of progress, we iterate, reflect, learn, adjust – and always leave things better than we found them.
• There are people behind every data point. We recognize that numbers tell only one part of the story, and we also do the work to understand impacts at the individual level.

Physical Requirements:

• Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Must be able to frequently communicate with others through virtual meeting applications such as Zoom and Google Meet.
• Must be able to observe and communicate information on company provided laptop.
• Move up to 10 pounds on occasion.
• Must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future.

Compensation:

Octave is committed to pay equity. To maintain our commitment to pay equity, Octave will follow Pay Transparency regulations on allopen job postings. Current Pay Transparency laws require companies to include a position's salary or hourly wage range (not including bonuses or equity-based compensation) in any internal or external job posting. This requirement extends to job postings published by a third party at an employer's request.

Octave will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with Octave’s legal duty to furnish information.

Starting pay for qualified applicants will depend on a combination of job-related factors, which may include education, training, experience, location, business needs, or market demands. The expected salary range for this role is set forth below and this range may be modified in the future.

The salary range for zone 1 (all states, excluding those in zone 2 or zone 3, and D.C.) is $142,600 - $153,100.

The salary range for zone 2 (CO, HI, MD, RI) is $156,900 - $168,400.

The salary range for zone 3 (AK, CA, CT, MA, NJ, NY, WA) is $164,000 - $176,000.

All zones are eligible for equity in the form of stock options.

Additionally, this position is eligible for the following benefits: company sponsored life insurance, disability and ADD plans. Voluntary benefits such as 401k retirement, medical, dental, vision, FSA, HSA, dependent care and commuter/parking options are also available. Octave offers generous Paid Time Off as well as paid parental leave benefits.

This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.