Software Engineer IV (Datastore) - Backend/Data Infrastructure

The Datastore team at Beacon Biosignals is seeking a Software Engineer IV to join their backend/data infrastructure team. The Datastore sits at the heart of Beacon’s platform, defining our foundational data model and serving as the centralized repository and API for brain data collected from clinical studies. This role focuses on designing and scaling backend systems for data infrastructure, including:

• PostgreSQL data models
• Kafka-driven event pipelines
• GraphQL API for scientific and clinical data usability

At this level, you will:

• Lead the design of complex systems within the Datastore, not just individual components
• Own the pipelines delivering dataset snapshots into the warehouse
• Collaborate across platform, application, and scientific teams to implement APIs that unlock new workflows in Beacon’s clinical studies and digital health products

You should expect to write SQL by hand and reason about schema design, indexes, and query behavior as a core part of your responsibilities.

What success looks like

• Lead design and architecture for complex projects and systems within the Datastore, weighing implementation trade-offs with engineering principles and backing decisions with data
• Partner with product managers, scientific and clinical stakeholders, and other development teams to translate requirements into new integrations, services, and solutions for scaling Beacon’s data platform
• Debug and profile ambiguous problems across system boundaries, improving structure, test coverage, and tooling
• Implement features with attention to detail, demonstrating product awareness and high standards for data integrity, design soundness, and maintainability
• Draft RFCs to lead complex feature discovery and technical design phases, soliciting and incorporating input
• Plan your own work and contribute to team planning, making reasoned trade-offs between speed, generalizability, and technical debt
• Teach and mentor other engineers regularly, giving actionable feedback and acting as a tech lead or coordination point for engineering practices
• Leverage feedback from stakeholders and partners to improve operational robustness and ease of use of the Datastore via new documentation, tools, and dashboards

What you will bring

• 7+ years of backend development experience, including at least 3 years focused on data platforms and backend infrastructure for data-centric applications (transactional systems, event pipelines, APIs)
• Highly proficient in at least one technical area relevant to this work: data modeling, distributed systems, API design, or database engineering, with depth that others on the team rely on
• Strong proficiency in SQL, with production experience working with PostgreSQL as an application database; fluent in writing and tuning queries, comfortable with schema design, indexes, and query plans
• Hands-on experience with data streaming and event processing, using Kafka (or equivalents like RabbitMQ, Pulsar, or Amazon Kinesis)
• Proficiency in Julia or Python; experience with Julia is a strong plus (not required)
• Experience with GraphQL and TypeScript/JavaScript (Node.js) — GraphQL is the Datastore’s primary interface
• Experience deploying and operating services in containerized environments, with familiarity in Kubernetes and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform and/or Helm
• A track record of mentoring engineers and improving team practices (tooling, test coverage, documentation)
• A collaborative mindset, enjoying cross-disciplinary work and believing in collective achievement
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, especially in asynchronous and remote-friendly environments
• A self-directed approach, with a track record of thriving in hybrid or fully remote teams
• Experience with, or interest in, using LLM-assisted or agentic coding tools in production settings, with good judgment about guardrails

We don’t expect every candidate to check every box. If you bring strong fundamentals, care about data infrastructure for health, and are excited to learn, we’d love to hear from you!