Principal Software Engineer; Backend

At Sage Bionetworks, we believe in the power of open science and interdisciplinary collaboration to create a new vision of human health. We strive for actionable biomedical insights through the responsible sharing and reuse of data, all guided by our deep scientific expertise and diligent governance controls.

We are hiring a Backend Software Engineer to join our technology team at Sage Bionetworks. Our engineers build the secure, scalable, and high-performance services that power open and collaborative science. From Synapse.org to our research portals and other applications in the Sage ecosystem, the tools you create will enable researchers and communities worldwide to share data, generate insights, and accelerate biomedical discoveries.

We pride ourselves on openness and collaboration. All of our software is available in Git Hub. Our openness and non-profit status attracts support from a variety of collaborators, including major technology companies. We prioritize productivity over arbitrary rules, allowing workers to choose the tools and work habits that suit them best, rather than dictating practices, top down. We prioritize software usefulness and stability rather than rushing to get features out the door.

We have close relationships with our user base, many in-house, ensuring that we stay relevant.

As a Principal Backend Software Engineer
, you will leverage your expertise to lead the design, prototyping, and development of core infrastructure and user-facing features across Sage Bionetworks’ platforms. You’ll drive architectural decisions that ensure our systems are secure, scalable, and extensible, while directly influencing product functionality and user experience. You’ll also have the opportunity to explore emerging technologies in cloud services, data science, and AI/ML, shaping the future of our platforms in support of open science and accelerating biomedical discovery.

• Software Development: Lead the architecture and implementation of cutting‑edge applications using programming languages and tools to create functional and efficient software. The main language used in this position is Java
  , though occasionally a project requires using another prominent language, like Python.
• Cloud Computing: Our platform runs primarily in the AWS Cloud and uses a large variety of services, from fundamentals like S3, EC2 and Cloud Watch to newer offerings like Bedrock.
• Relational Database Design: Our platform is backed by a relational database. Designing and implementing schemas, transactions, and queries is core to the software development effort.
• Requirement Analysis: Analyze user requirements to develop robust and efficient software solutions.
• Teamwork: Our team follows an Agile process with scrums, issue scoping, backlog prioritization, and code reviews. As a principal engineer you will provide guidance to more junior engineers. You will work with product managers and designers.
• Dev Ops: You will participate in monitoring the performance of the system and addressing issues that arise in production. Over the past 15 years we have not required developers to be on call outside of business hours and are intentional about making our system robust so that it does not become necessary.
• Technical Documentation: Provide comprehensive technical documentation to support users and developers.
• Community Engagement: Participate and lead in external groups and communities to stay informed on best practices.
• Technology Trends: Stay aware of technological trends and advancements, recommending strategic product enhancements.
• Productivity: Stay current regarding engineering productivity tools, include recent trends in AI/agent‑based tools.

• A BS or MS in Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent training.
• 8+ years of professional software development experience.
• Expert level Java programming skills, experience with backend frameworks like Spring, plus experience with another modern backend language (e.g., Python, Type Script/Node.js).
• Expert level relational database experience, with knowledge of data modeling, schema design, transaction isolation and query construction.
• Experience building, deploying, and supporting software in production environments.
• Expertise with collaborative development through Git‑based version control systems.
• Practical experience with software development life cycles, agile methodologies, and tools for organizing/prioritizing work, like Jira..
• Familiarity with dependency management / build tools, including Maven.
• Familiarity with continuous integration (CI), continuous deployment (CD) tools e.g., Git Hub Workflows, AWS Code Pipeline.
• Strong verbal, written, and organizational skills.
• Curiosity to explore new tools and frameworks and contribute ideas that advance our technology.

• Experience with cloud‑native development and orchestration tools such as AWS ECS.
• Knowledge of…