Senior Back End Engineer

About Oddball: Oddball is a premier, internationally recognized civic technology leader, digital product engineering pioneer, and modern federal software consultancy innovator on an absolute mission to improve the daily lives of millions of citizens by delivering world-class, high-performing software systems to the public sector. Built on the core philosophy that the most transformative digital products are engineered when teams deeply understand, respect, and value the real-world human needs behind their code, Oddball brings agile private-sector software craft into the complex federal space. As a critical trusted engineering partner to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Oddball modernizes the heart of the nation healthcare infrastructure. Our distributed teams build, optimize, and maintain the highly available backend services and application programming interfaces (APIs) that power Healthcare.gov—the mission-critical national web marketplace utilized by millions of Americans to explore, evaluate, and securely enroll in health insurance coverage and third-party enrollment platforms. Operating with an execution-driven corporate culture that prioritizes learning, velocity, and outsized structural impacts, Oddball provides high-agency developers with an uncompromised remote canvas to leverage state-of-the-art serverless systems, manipulate high-volume healthcare data ecosystems, and deploy resilient digital products safely across the United States.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly analytical, systems-minded Senior Backend Engineer to join our core centralized CMS collective in a full-time remote capacity across the United States. In this high-stakes, high-leverage technical seat, you will step up to claim true individual operational and architectural accountability for directing the development, optimization, and scaling velocity of the backend web services power-routing Healthcare.gov enrollment tools. Shifting completely away from routine script testing, minor content updates, or basic dashboard layout configuration, you will operate as a principal software craftsman anchoring multi-tenant cloud ecosystems—partnering cross-functionally across agile squads of data scientists, product managers, visual designers, and security compliance experts. This position requires an internet technology veteran who programs performant backend microservices fluidly natively using Backend engineering architectures (specifically Go/Golang), constructs highly scalable data manipulation pipelines smoothly natively using Python environment frameworks, and ensures absolute data integrity and backward compatibility confidently across relational database systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Go Microservices and API Architecture: Design, code, and scale robust, secure backend web services and REST APIs, ensuring absolute system reliability, thread safety, and seamless backward compatibility cleanly natively utilizing Backend development methodologies.
• Data Engineering and Pipeline Infrastructure: Build, automate, and maintain complex Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) data streaming tracks, cleaning and transforming massive datasets to move fluidly across the national healthcare registry natively leveraging Python data manipulation systems.
• Relational Database Optimization: Code and manage highly optimized SQL logic structures, indexing strategies, and schema definitions inside production PostgreSQL database clusters to prevent transaction processing drops under peak enrollment surges.
• AWS Cloud Native Service Orchestration: Architect and support secure serverless computing tracks and cloud workflows, integrating data arrays dynamically across Amazon Web Services (AWS) nodes including S3 buckets, Lambda instances, Step Functions, and Glue modules.
• Clean-Code and Security Governance: Write exceptionally clean, scannable, secure, and deeply tested software blocks, placing an absolute premium on high concurrency performance, absolute data security, and ease of maintenance.
• Agile Lifecycle Contribution and O&M: Own the balance between new feature creation and ongoing Operations and Maintenance (O&M) tracks, supporting legacy service iterations while driving modern ecosystem upgrades inside a collaborative Scrum loop.
• Peer Code Auditing and Mentorship: Uphold strict company-wide engineering standards and architectural best practices, leading rigorous peer code reviews to minimize technical debt and elevate team-wide code craftsmanship.
• Clear Inter-Pod Technical Communication: Articulate sophisticated software mechanics, interface contracts, and pipeline schemas with absolute transparency during code pull-requests and cross-team sprint planning assemblies.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• A minimum of 5 years of verified professional history running advanced backend software engineering, distributed systems development, cloud infrastructure programming, server-side API design, or technical systems consulting.
• Mandatory Programming Language Mastery: Proven, hands-on professional history successfully writing and shipping concurrent production-grade backend web services using the Go (Golang) programming language.
• Proven, documented history successfully writing, optimizing, and automating structural data migration or data cleaning scripts natively utilizing Python workflows.
• Deep, authoritative technical command of relational database engines, advanced SQL querying, data normalization rules, indexing optimizations, and transactional transaction properties (specifically requiring PostgreSQL fluency).
• Expert-tier capability writing clean runtime models, compiling data schemas, and optimizing transaction metrics natively utilizing Backend parameters.
• Practical operational familiarity structuring multi-tier cloud architectures, configuring lambda triggers, and handling big data orchestration blocks natively using Python libraries and AWS developer tools (including S3, Lambda, Step Functions, and/or Glue).
• Outstanding written and verbal communication traits in business-fluent English, enabling absolute confidence and clear architectural alignment when collaborating across distributed cross-functional technical teams.
• Federal Compliance and Clearance Readiness: Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. In absolute alignment with strict federal agency contract provisions, candidate tracking context dictates that certain roles within this unit require U.S. Citizenship and the baseline operational readiness to successfully obtain and maintain a federal background investigation clearance.
• Education context: Possession of a formal university Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical career field experience.

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior hands-on software history manipulating data sets through advanced big-data analytical manipulation frameworks such as Pandas libraries or PySpark clusters.
• Direct operational familiarity handling Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR standards), electronic health registries, or adjacent highly regulated medical data interoperability rules.
• Prior commercial engineering history operating explicitly with federal cybersecurity compliance profiles, NIST frameworks, or secure government cloud computing parameters.
• An outcome-driven personal philosophy rooted in high technical curiosity, an aversion to brittle software codebases, and an intense passion for building civic software tools that benefit millions of human lives daily.

What We Offer

• Civic Tech-Scaled United States Salaried Blueprint: An attractive full-time base compensation package structured transparently between $100,000 and $135,000 USD per year, calibrated precisely to evaluate your backend Go authority, Python data craft, and system architecture velocity under a stable federal contracting arrangement.
• The exceptional professional canvas to directly direct, shape, and code-engineer the backend infrastructure networks protecting healthcare access lines for millions of citizens nationwide.
• Profound work-from-home remote parameters offering a 100% remote layout across America, complete scheduling trust, and zero physical geographic office commuting friction out of any state.
• Access to elite personal and home-office workspace equipment upscaling through a recurring corporate **Tech & Education Stipend**.
• Immediate baseline access to premium comprehensive healthcare protections, providing robust medical, dental, and vision insurance options managed through corporate tracks.
• Access to elite financial accumulation provisions, featuring a company matching 401(k) retirement channel, covered flexible Paid Time Off (PTO) structures, and paid national holidays within an expanding, visionary civic technology champion.