Backend Engineer (Python)

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Backend Engineer (Python) based in France.** As a Backend Engineer, you will help develop and scale an AI-powered voice platform designed to improve healthcare access and support for adults aged 65 and older. You will build the Python services and backend workflows that enable intelligent patient conversations, coordinate follow-up care, and connect patients with the right clinical resources. Working at the intersection of backend engineering, applied AI, and healthcare technology, you will contribute to features such as appointment scheduling, medication refill requests, and post-discharge support. You will take ownership of well-defined projects from technical design through deployment, collaborating closely with engineers, product specialists, designers, and clinical operations teams. Within a small, distributed European engineering team, you will have the opportunity to influence product reliability, data security, and the quality of patient experiences. This role offers meaningful technical challenges, hands-on exposure to modern AI technologies, and the chance to build software with a tangible impact on people's health and well-being. ### Accountabilities: - **Develop and maintain backend services:** Build and extend Python-based APIs, data models, and background workflows supporting patient enrollment, call scheduling, communication preferences, and follow-up processes. - **Enhance AI-powered voice workflows:** Improve the backend systems that support an AI voice agent, enabling personalized patient conversations, access to relevant context, and integration with appropriate tools across multiple languages and care programs. - **Integrate healthcare systems:** Connect voice workflows with electronic health records and clinical data platforms, ensuring conversations are informed by relevant patient information and that patient requests reach the appropriate care teams. - **Automate patient care coordination:** Develop reliable workflows that help patients schedule appointments, request medication refills, and receive appropriate follow-up, with clear handoffs and visibility into subsequent actions. - **Build resilient distributed systems:** Design backend processes that handle interrupted calls, duplicate webhooks, external service failures, timeouts, retries, and other operational edge cases without compromising data integrity. - **Improve system reliability and performance:** Write automated tests, participate in code reviews, investigate production issues, and use logs and metrics to identify and resolve technical problems. - **Support cloud deployment and service integration:** Deploy and maintain containerized services in a cloud environment, ensuring compatibility across independently deployed components and supporting safe, incremental releases. - **Protect sensitive patient information:** Incorporate privacy, security, and responsible data handling into everyday engineering decisions, particularly when working with healthcare records and personal information. - **Collaborate across distributed teams:** Work with engineering, product, design, and clinical operations colleagues to understand requirements, communicate technical decisions, and deliver improvements aligned with patient and care-team needs. - **Contribute to continuous improvement:** Take ownership of defined features from technical planning through production deployment, incorporating feedback and refining existing workflows to improve reliability and usability. ## Requirements: - **Production engineering experience:** Demonstrated experience building, shipping, and maintaining backend services in production. Practical ownership and the quality of your work matter more than a specific number of years of experience. - **Strong Python skills:** Proficiency in Python and experience developing HTTP APIs with FastAPI or a comparable framework, including comfort working with asynchronous programming. - **Database expertise:** Practical experience with PostgreSQL or another relational database, including data modeling, schema design, migrations, and maintaining data integrity. - **API and integration experience:** Experience integrating third-party services and developing background jobs or queue-based workflows, with an understanding of timeouts, retries, duplicate events, and partial failures. - **Sound engineering practices:** Ability to write readable, maintainable code, create useful automated tests, participate in code reviews, and debug issues using logs, metrics, and other observability tools. - **Cloud and deployment knowledge:** Experience deploying containerized applications to a cloud platform and understanding the operational considerations involved in running production services. - **End-to-end ownership:** Ability to take a clearly defined problem from initial design through implementation, testing, and release, while recognizing when to seek feedback or technical support. - **Communication and collaboration:** Clear written and spoken English, with the ability to explain technical decisions, communicate progress, and collaborate effectively with colleagues across distributed teams and time zones. - **Adaptability and problem-solving:** A practical, proactive approach to engineering, with a willingness to investigate unfamiliar systems, learn new technologies, and improve existing solutions collaboratively. - **Availability for cross-time-zone collaboration:** Ability to be available from 14:00 to 18:00 Central European local time (CET/CEST) on working days to collaborate with colleagues in the United States. - **Additional technical experience (a plus):** Familiarity with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Terraform, or OpenTelemetry is advantageous. - **Applied AI and voice technology (a plus):** Experience with LiveKit, telephony systems, voice agents, large language model (LLM) integrations, or evaluating AI-powered features is beneficial. - **Healthcare technology experience (a plus):** Familiarity with healthcare systems, sensitive personal information, or workflows requiring dependable follow-through is an advantage. - **Additional language skills (a plus):** Spanish or Portuguese proficiency can be useful when reviewing and improving multilingual voice-agent conversations. - **Location eligibility:** Candidates must be based in Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Poland, or Greece and be able to work under a local employment contract through an employer of record. Previous experience in healthcare or voice AI is not required, and candidates do not need experience with every technology in the existing stack. The role is suited to engineers with strong backend fundamentals who are eager to learn and contribute to meaningful AI-powered products. ## Benefits: - **Competitive salary:** Annual gross salary ranging from **€65,000 to €90,000**, depending on experience and location. - **Full-time, permanent employment:** A permanent local employment contract facilitated through an employer of record. - **Remote work:** Work remotely from an eligible European country. - **Meaningful product impact:** Contribute to a live healthcare product that supports older adults, improves access to care, and helps care teams provide timely follow-up. - **Technical ownership:** Take responsibility for backend features from design through deployment within a small, collaborative engineering team. - **Professional development:** Deepen your expertise in Python, asynchronous systems, cloud infrastructure, and applied AI technologies. - **Modern technology stack:** Work with Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Google Cloud Platform, Terraform, LiveKit Agents, speech recognition, large language models, and text-to-speech technologies. - **Cross-functional collaboration:** Work closely with engineering, product, design, and clinical operations colleagues across Europe and the United States. - **Structured collaboration time:** Dedicated daily collaboration hours with US-based colleagues, balanced with asynchronous communication and focused individual work. - **No on-call responsibilities:** Focus on building and improving reliable software without a scheduled on-call requirement. - **Purpose-driven environment:** Contribute to a healthcare model centered on prevention, patient well-being, and stronger relationships between patients and care providers.