Senior Software Engineer - API & Distributed Systems

Senior Member of Technical Staff - SMTS

Join us as we work to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

Role Summary

We are seeking an experienced Senior Member of Technical Staff with a strong understanding of distributed systems, API architecture, and modern platform infrastructure. This role demands strong technical expertise, ownership, and a growth mindset in developing scalable and resilient API infrastructure that acts as an intelligent abstraction between various consumers and athena's clinical, administrative, financial, and operational data. The position requires 5+ years of software engineering experience with experience in distributed architecture projects. You will focus on developing scalable, secure, and low-latent systems that meet the high bar required for healthcare: privacy, reliability, auditability, and trust.

Team Summary

The API Solutions team is part of the Data and Ecosystem Platform organization within Product Management R&D, advancing our external and internal facing API products including MCP (Model Context Protocol for AI-driven workflows and agentic experiences), Event based notifications, Clinical Decision Support, and GraphQL. Reporting to Senior Manager Engineering, this Bangalore-based hybrid role offers a unique opportunity to contribute to technical excellence in a fast-paced environment, delivering high-impact platform capabilities used by internal teams, partners, and external developers. The team is building the next generation of platform capabilities that enable developers, partners, and customers to safely and efficiently extend the athena ecosystem.

Essential Job Responsibilities

Technical Execution:

• Develop and maintain high-performance, scalable API solutions that enable secure interactions with athena's FHIR and proprietary APIs across multiple product offerings
• Design and implement core API capabilities including schema definition, tool/action invocation, session management, state handling, and event-driven architectures
• Build robust authentication, authorization, and data minimization frameworks that ensure safe access to healthcare data
• Write, debug, and deploy code to production and deliver timely fixes
• Adhere to DoD (Definition of Done) as part of the sprint, including unit tests, functional testing, code reviews, no regressions, bug fixes, documentation and adhere to best coding practices
• Perform peer code reviews and follow athenahealth's processes to ensure quality standards
• Produce clear and comprehensive technical design specifications and documentation for API architecture, integrations, and service components
• Implement robust monitoring, logging, audit trails, and alerting to ensure system health, performance, and compliance with healthcare regulations
• Debug, troubleshoot, and optimize API services and related backend systems in distributed cloud environments
• Design and implement rate limiting, error handling, and observability frameworks for production-grade API interactions
• Continuously enhance service reliability, scalability, and maintainability through best practices in coding, testing, and deployment

Team Collaboration:

• Develop strong understanding of API architecture, modern integration patterns, and related backend technologies
• Take ownership of assigned features and components, emphasizing quality and operational excellence
• Contribute actively to Agile ceremonies to drive continuous improvement
• Volunteer for backlog tasks, navigate cross-team dependencies, and promote best practices within the team for collaborative delivery
• Support a culture of self-organization, peer reviews, and knowledge sharing
• Mentor junior engineers on API standards, design patterns, and distributed systems best practices

Additional Job Responsibilities

Cross-Functional Coordination:

• Collaborate with product managers, architects, security teams, and backend engineers to ensure alignment of technical goals with business needs and compliance requirements
• Build strong working relationships with cross-functional teams, sharing insights on architecture, security, and API design
• Work with internal product teams to pilot API integrations into real athena workflows
• Communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Work with Legal, Compliance, and Security teams to ensure API implementations meet healthcare regulatory requirements

Behaviors & Abilities:

• Ability to learn new technologies rapidly and adapt to evolving requirements in the API solutions space
• Writing code that is performant, scalable, secure, and maintainable, with particular attention to healthcare data privacy
• Drive technical decisions and contribute to effective solutions
• Consistently deliver results in high-pressure, fast-paced environments
• Follow and promote engineering best practices, including code reviews, testing, and documentation
• Collaborate effectively with diverse teams and stakeholders, translating business needs into technical solutions
• Strong analytical and systems-thinking skills, able to reason about scale, performance, and failure modes
• Build trust and alignment across engineering, security, legal, and business stakeholders

Education, Experience & Skills Required

• Bachelor's/master's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of experience in software engineering with experience in distributed architecture projects
• Hands-on experience with Object Oriented Languages such as Java in addition to typescript, javascript, python, perl or other similar languages a plus
• Working familiarity with event-driven architectures, GraphQL, AI/ML platforms, or agent frameworks a plus
• Proven experience in an Agile environment, SDLC, deployment, and operational support of scalable services
• Strong knowledge of core web and cloud fundamentals: HTTP, REST, APIs, Public Cloud (AWS preferred)
• Practical expertise with API gateway patterns and microservices design
• Experience with FHIR standards and healthcare interoperability preferred
• Solid understanding of authentication models (OAuth 2.0, JWT, API tokens) and authorization patterns (RBAC, ABAC)
• Experience building and managing scalable APIs and microservices in public cloud environments
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), and CI/CD pipelines
• Understanding of observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack) and distributed tracing

About athenahealth

Our vision: In an industry that becomes more complex by the day, we stand for simplicity. We offer IT solutions and expert services that eliminate the daily hurdles preventing healthcare providers from focusing entirely on their patients — powered by our vision to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

Our company culture: Our talented  employees — or athenistas, as we call ourselves — spark the innovation and passion needed to accomplish our vision. We are a diverse group of dreamers and do-ers with unique knowledge, expertise, backgrounds, and perspectives. We unite as mission-driven problem-solvers with a deep desire to achieve our vision and make our time here count. Our award-winning culture is built around shared values of inclusiveness, accountability, and support.

Our DEI commitment: Our vision of accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all requires addressing the inequities that stand in the way. That's one reason we prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of our business, from attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce to maintaining an inclusive environment for athenistas, our partners, customers and the communities where we work and serve.

What we can do for you:

Along with health and financial benefits, athenistas enjoy perks specific to each location, including commuter support, employee assistance programs, tuition assistance, employee resource groups, and collaborative  workspaces  — some offices even welcome dogs.

We also encourage a better work-life balance for athenistas with our flexibility. While we know in-office collaboration is critical to our vision, we recognize that not all work needs to be done within an office environment, full-time. With consistent communication and digital collaboration tools, athenahealth enables employees to find a balance that feels fulfilling and productive for each individual situation.

In addition to our traditional benefits and perks, we sponsor events throughout the year, including book clubs, external speakers, and hackathons. We provide athenistas with a company culture based on learning, the support of an engaged team, and an inclusive environment where all employees are valued. 

Learn more about our culture and benefits here: athenahealth.com/careers  

https://www.athenahealth.com/careers/equal-opportunity

Experience Level

Senior Level