Sketchy
Senior Software Developer, Backend
🇺🇸
Remote - US
🕑
Full-Time
💰
$160K - $200K
💻
Software Engineering
🗓️
February 26th, 2026
CI/CD
Docker
Node.js
Edtech.com's Summary
Sketchy is hiring a Senior Software Developer, Backend to lead the technical direction and implementation of critical backend services and AI-enabled features. The role involves collaborating with cross-functional teams to build scalable, reliable systems while integrating applied AI to enhance clinical education platforms.
Highlights
- Lead backend service and API design focusing on scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
- Collaborate with Product and Design to define requirements and deliverables with success metrics.
- Develop and operate AI-enabled features such as LLM-backed workflows and system monitoring.
- Make architecture decisions through RFCs and work on service boundaries, data models, async workflows, caching, and migrations.
- Write high-quality code, conduct code reviews, mentor junior engineers, and improve system observability and performance.
- Participate in on-call rotation and resolve production issues with follow-up learnings.
- Required skills: 6-10+ years backend experience, AWS (EC2, Lambda, Fargate), Terraform, Redis, Postgres, JavaScript/Node.js, TypeScript, NestJS, Docker, CI/CD, and observability tools like Datadog.
- Must have practical experience deploying AI-enabled production features, including retrieval augmented generation and monitoring for quality and cost.
- Nice to have experience with developer tooling, edtech, learning analytics, and security best practices.
- Compensation: $160,000 to $200,000 base salary plus performance bonus and stock options.
Senior Software Developer, Backend Full Description
Senior Software Developer, Backend
Our Company
Medicine is evolving faster than ever, and so is the way clinicians learn. At Sketchy, we partner with institutions, health systems, and learners to expand access to high-quality clinical education that prepares clinicians for what’s next.
Our mission is to help clinicians build the readiness and agility needed to deliver better decisions, stronger patient connections, and higher-quality care in a world shaped by AI and precision medicine.
We’re reimagining how clinical reasoning, communication, and other core competencies are developed, empowering every learner to adapt, grow, and lead in the future of healthcare.
Position Summary
Sketchy is building the future of clinical education through storytelling, scalable platforms, and applied AI. As a Senior Software Developer, Backend, you will help lead the technical direction of our most critical backend systems and AI-enabled services, guiding architecture decisions that balance speed, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
You will serve as a leader across teams, partnering closely with Product, Design, Data, and Frontend Engineering to turn ambiguous product goals into robust, production-ready systems. This role is ideal for an experienced backend engineer who thrives in high-ownership environments, and is excited to ship real-world AI systems that directly impact how clinicians learn and practice.
Sketchy is hiring remote employees in these select US states: California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Washington!
You’ll thrive here if you:
- Turn ambiguity into clear plans, tradeoffs, and execution paths
- Care deeply about reliability, observability, and operational excellence
- Believe applied AI should be pragmatic, measurable, safe, and cost-aware
Responsibilities:
- Lead the design and implementation of backend services and APIs for key product areas, balancing delivery speed with reliability, scalability, and maintainability.
- Partner with Product and Design to clarify requirements, propose solutions, estimate effort, and deliver milestones with clear success metrics.
- Build and operate applied AI features in production (e.g., LLM-backed workflows, evaluation/guardrails, retrieval patterns, experimentation, and monitoring) with a focus on quality, safety, and cost.
- Contribute to architecture decisions through RFCs/design docs, proposing pragmatic patterns for service boundaries, data models, async workflows, caching, and migrations.
- Write high-quality code and raise the bar through code reviews, pairing, and sharing best practices; mentor junior engineers as needed.
- Improve operational health for the systems you own: observability, performance tuning, reliability improvements, and on-call outcomes.
- Participate in an on-call rotation and help debug/resolve production issues; contribute to post-incident learnings and follow-ups.
- Break down product requirements into well-scoped tickets and workstreams, coordinating with teammates to deliver predictably.
What We’re Looking For:
- 6–10+ years building and operating production backend systems (consumer and/or B2B SaaS), including scaling, reliability, and distributed systems exposure.
- Strong experience with AWS (EC2/Fargate/Lambda/Queues), Terraform (or comparable IaC), Redis, relational databases, and SQL (Postgres).
- Strong experience with JavaScript/Node.js, TypeScript, and NestJS (or comparable modern frameworks).
- Experience with Docker/containerization, CI/CD, and production deployment patterns.
- Proven ability to design and ship scalable systems, and to make sound tradeoffs across APIs, data modeling, async patterns, caching, and migrations.
- Strong instrumentation/observability skills (metrics/logging/tracing), performance debugging, and cost awareness (e.g., Datadog).
- Clear communicator who collaborates well with technical and non-technical partners.
- Comfortable in startup environments: ownership, pragmatism, and delivery under uncertainty
Applied AI / Generative AI (Must Have)
- Practical experience shipping AI-enabled features into production, including LLM-backed workflows, retrieval patterns (RAG, embeddings, vector databases), evaluation and guardrails, and monitoring for quality, latency, cost, and model drift.
Nice to Have
- Experience building internal platforms or developer tooling; background in edtech or learning analytics; familiarity with modern privacy and security best practices (PII handling, least privilege, secure-by-default).
If you don’t have 100% of the bullets listed above, that’s okay! We know there are no perfect applicants. If you are passionate about making a meaningful difference, we want to hear from you! Learn more about Sketchy’s culture at sketchy.com/careers.
Who you will work closely with
Vlad Iacob – Director of Engineering
Ryan Pierce – Tech Lead, Frontend
Jaimie Stein – Tech Lead, Data
Salary Range
$160,000 to $200,000 annual salary plus a performance-based annual bonus and stock options
Our Perks
- 100% Individual Health Coverage - We got you covered!
- Equity - From day one, you’ll have a stake in our future growth.
- 401(k) - We support your financial future with up to 5% matching.
- Annual Company Retreat in Cool Places
- Flexible Time Off
- Annual Work Anniversary Stipend
- Monthly Wifi & Phone Reimbursement
- Short Term & Long Term Disability
Sketchy Group LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All applicants will receive consideration without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, age, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, disability or any other basis prohibited by applicable law.
The pay range for this role is:
160,000 - 200,000 USD per year (Remote (United States))
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