Beacon Biosignals is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our Datastore team. The Datastore sits at the heart of Beacon's platform. It defines our foundational data model and serves as the centralized repository and API for brain data collected from clinical studies, supporting the analytical tools, services, and applications used by our scientists, clinicians, and partners.
This role emphasizes the design and scaling of backend systems for data infrastructure: PostgreSQL data models, Kafka-driven event pipelines, and a GraphQL API that enables scientific and clinical data use - distinct from frontend development or end-user product surfaces. You will lead the design and integration of new services and components for data and event processing, own the pipelines that deliver dataset snapshots into our warehouse, and collaborate with platform and application teams to implement APIs that unlock new workflows in Beacon's expanding portfolio of clinical studies and digital health products.
You should expect to write SQL by hand, and to reason about schema design, indexes, and query behavior as a matter of course.
Beacon's robust asynchronous work practices ensure a first-class remote work experience, but we also have in-person office hubs available located in Boston, New York and Paris. This role is fully remote working anywhere in the US.
What success looks like- You partner with product managers, scientific and clinical stakeholders, internal stakeholders, and other development and support teams to translate their requirements into new integrations, services, and solutions for scaling Beacon's data platform
- You implement features with attention to detail, demonstrating product awareness and high standards for data integrity, design soundness, and maintainability across the lifespan of the system
- You draft RFCs to lead complex feature discovery and technical design phases, soliciting and incorporating input, and helping your team align on a set of decisions to guide development
- You hold a high bar for correctness when data moves between systems: completeness, idempotency, and predictable behavior under partial failure
- You leverage feedback from internal stakeholders and external partners to improve operational robustness and ease of use of the Datastore and its services via new documentation, tools, and dashboards
What you will bring- 5+ years of backend development experience, including at least 2 years focused on data platforms and backend infrastructure for data-centric applications - transactional systems, event pipelines, and the APIs that serve them
- Strong proficiency in SQL, with production experience working with PostgreSQL as an application database; you write and tune queries by hand and are comfortable reasoning about schema design, indexes, and query plans
- Hands-on experience with data streaming and event processing, using Kafka (our event bus) or an equivalent such as RabbitMQ, Pulsar, or a cloud-based equivalent like Amazon Kinesis
- Proficiency in Julia or Python
- Experience with Julia is a strong plus, but not required - we welcome candidates eager to learn it!
- Experience deploying and operating services in containerized environments, with familiarity in Kubernetes and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform and/or Helm
- Experience with GraphQL and TypeScript/JavaScript (Node.js); GraphQL is the Datastore's primary interface
- A collaborative mindset - you enjoy working across disciplines and believe people achieve more together than alone
- 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
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!
The salary range for this role is $150,000 - $170,000. Salary ranges are determined using current market compensation data for this role and adjusted based on experience, skills, and location.The base salary is one component of the total compensation package, which includes equity, PTO and other benefits.
At Beacon, we've found that cultural and scientific impact is driven most by those that lead by example. As such, we're always seeking new contributors whose work demonstrates an avid curiosity, a bias towards simplicity, an eye for composability, a self-service mindset, and - most of all - a deep empathy towards colleagues, stakeholders, users, and patients. We believe a diverse team builds more robust systems and achieves higher impact.
