Engineering Manager, Backend Team

The role

You will lead a backend team of six engineers and own the technical direction, delivery, and production health of backend systems and cloud infrastructure. The role is roughly 60% hands-on and 40% management.

What you will do

• Design, write, and review backend code across services and APIs.
• Manage and grow a team of backend engineers through feedback and coaching.
• Lead hiring for backend and devops opportunities.
• Own architecture decisions for high-volume backend systems.
• Own AWS infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment automation.
• Own production health including monitoring, alerting, on-call, and incident response.
• Ensure backend systems meet healthcare data security standards like HIPAA and SOC 2.
• Scope, sequence, and track delivery across concurrent backend work streams.
• Work with product, front-end engineering, and interoperability teams.
• Raise the bar on testing, code review, and development process.

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience
• 2+ years managing a team of 4-8 engineers while staying hands-on in the code
• Deep backend expertise in Python/Django and/or Node.js + TypeScript
• Relational database design and performance tuning in PostgreSQL or similar
• Accountability for systems in production, including on-call, incident response, observability, and postmortems
• History of technical leadership driving architecture decisions and setting engineering standards
• Working knowledge of AWS, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code
• Proven ability to hire, develop, and retain strong engineers
• Experience at an early or growth stage startup

Nice to have

• Experience building systems that handle HIPAA-protected data or operate in another compliance-heavy industry (SOC 2, fintech, etc.)
• Hands-on experience with Terraform, Docker/Kubernetes, and Datadog or similar observability tooling
• Background in scheduling, logistics, or optimization systems
• Experience building data pipelines or ETL into cloud data warehouses for analytics and reporting
• Experience using AI tools like Claude Code or Cursor to speed up development and review workflows

Benefits

• Equity compensation
• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• 401k plan
• Flexible PTO and sick days
• Commuter benefits
• Santa Monica HQ with 180 degree beach views and daily catered lunches
• Monthly team events, dinners, & happy hours
• Special team outings

About the company

Axle Health builds AI scheduling and workforce management software to empower in-home healthcare providers. The platform includes proprietary logistics algorithms, a mobile app, an operations dashboard, and engagement tools.