Senior Backend Engineer, Product

Overview

Sage is on a mission to improve care and quality of life for older adults, starting with those residing in senior living facilities. Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among adults over 65. And yet, fall prevention and emergency response systems for older adults are archaic and ineffective. At Sage we've built a more modern way of understanding when older adults need help, including methods for residents to alert caregivers when in need of help, and corresponding software for caregivers to triage response.

Our company mission is to create a product that our client counterparts love, and this role is a key part of that objective.

Sage is a small, tight team of ambitious, multi-disciplinary entrepreneurs. We are a software-enabled, mission-driven company, and are focused only on the problems that are central to achieving that mission. At Sage, we work hard and fast but also know that to build a truly important company, we need to treat our work as a marathon, and not a sprint. The journey matters.

About this Role

We’re looking for an experienced Backend Engineer to join our engineering team as a senior IC focused on backend service development for a product for a new market currently under development. Our platform is mission-critical, with many moving parts: distributed services, relational and No

SQL data stores, message queues, real-time data pipelines, and a growing set of APIs that must perform reliably at scale.

In this role, you’ll take ownership of designing and building scalable backend services that sit at the core of the product. You’ll work across Java-based microservices, databases, and messaging layers to ensure the stack is cleanly designed, performant, observable, and maintainable. You’ll also be central to shaping how we design and manage APIs and how backend systems integrate with front-end applications and core infrastructure.

This is a highly impactful position where you’ll define patterns and practices for service design and data architecture while mentoring others and shaping the future of our backend engineering.

• Architect & Build Services
  :
  Design, implement, and scale backend services in Java using frameworks like Spring Boot or Dropwizard.
• Data & Persistence
  :
  Design data models and persistence strategies across Postgres and No
  
  SQL stores (Dynamo
  
  DB or similar).
• Messaging & Integration
  :
  Build and operate systems that leverage message queues (SQS, Kafka, etc.) for asynchronous communication and event-driven workflows.
• API Design & Management
  :
  Define, document, and evolve REST APIs using OpenAPI
  , ensuring consistency, clarity, and strong collaboration with front-end teams.
• Optimize for Scale & Reliability
  :
  Ensure services are performant, observable, fault-tolerant, and capable of handling 24/7 production workloads.
• CI/CD & Tooling
  :
  Own build pipelines and service delivery using Gradle
  , automated testing, and CI/CD best practices.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally
  :
  Work closely with front-end engineers to design API contracts, and with infrastructure engineers to ensure backend services integrate seamlessly into our containerized, cloud-native platform.
• Service & Data Design Leadership
  :
  Set patterns for clean, consistent API design, service boundaries, and data architecture across the engineering org.
• Mentor & Guide
  :
  Provide technical leadership, perform design and code reviews, and coach teammates in backend engineering best practices.

• Core Backend Engineering
  • Strong proficiency in Java and backend service frameworks (
    Spring Boot, Dropwizard
    ).
  • Deep familiarity with ORMs (Hibernate, JPA) and data persistence patterns.
  • Solid understanding of service design principles and clean architecture patterns.
• Data & Storage
  • Hands-on experience with Postgres and SQL performance tuning.
  • Working knowledge of No
    
    SQL databases (Dynamo
    
    DB, Mongo
    
    DB, or similar).
  • Understanding of transactions, consistency, and data modeling in distributed systems.
• Experience with SQS, Kafka, or equivalent queues/streaming systems
  .
• Knowledge of event-driven architecture and at-least-once/exactly-once delivery guarantees.
• Experience designing, documenting, and evolving APIs…