Senior Backend Engineer — Java​/Data Platform

View all jobs Senior Backend (Full-stack) Engineer Zurich, Switzerland Product Hybrid Full-time About Rivia Rivia is a technology company building a data engine that powers the future of clinical trial intelligence. Rivia was founded on the belief that new drugs can be brought to market more successfully with a fraction of today's capital. Biotechs are the source of most therapeutic innovation, yet clinical development is constantly constrained by fragmented data and outdated tooling.

Rivia unifies clinical trial data at scale through a core engine built as a reusable intelligence layer, comprising hundreds of configurations and trial-specific logic, independent of source structure. This vertical stack of data engine, workflows, and agents creates a distinct advantage in how trials are operated. Over the past two years, European and US based biotechs running global clinical trials on Rivia have demonstrated measurable impact, from earlier understanding of therapeutic potential to significantly more efficient trial execution.

In March 2026, Rivia raised its $15M Series A led by Earlybird Venture Capital. Rivia’s ambition is to become the standard infrastructure for modern drug development, transforming how trials are executed end-to-end. The Role As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will lead the design and implementation of scalable backend services and data infrastructure that power our clinical trial data platform.

You will own major parts of our backend architecture, from APIs and data models to integration with cloud services and machine learning components, while being comfortable contributing across the stack when needed. You will collaborate closely with product, data, and frontend teams to ship high-quality features iteratively and help shape the future of our platform. To succeed in this role, you should have a passion for iterative product development and possess a strategic, analytical mindset.

You should be comfortable navigating the uncertainties of a startup environment, adaptable to shifting priorities, and driven to transform the pharmaceutical industry. Embrace the challenge of building the future of clinical trial technology and help realize Rivia's vision of becoming the definitive unified data infrastructure for clinical trials. Our stack Some technologies we use today:
Typescript, React, Java, Python, Spring, Postgres, GPT-4, AWS, Kubernetes. There's no need to be a prior expert in our stack; it's more important that you learn new technologies quickly. Working Model: This role is based on-site in our Zürich officeWhat excites you

• Building high quality software that delights end users
• Owning the architecture, implementation, and operation of core backend services and APIs.
• Designing robust data models and storage patterns that make complex clinical trial data manageable and performant.
• Solving hard problems around scalability, reliability, and performance in a data-heavy environment.
• Thriving in a fast-paced startup environment where you have autonomy over your work and make strategic decisions that impact users and the team
• Working with cloud infrastructure and modern tooling to build secure, observable, and maintainable services

• Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs (primarily in Java/Spring) that power our clinical trial platform.
• Model, store, and query complex data efficiently in Postgres and related data systems.
• Implement and maintain integrations and pipelines that ingest and process data from multiple sources.
• Collaborate with frontend engineers to define API contracts and, when needed, contribute full‑stack changes to ship complete features.
• Ensure high availability, observability, and security of backend services through monitoring, testing, and sound operational practices.
• Participate in technical planning, code reviews, and knowledge sharing to continuously improve the team’s effectiveness.

• Strong experience building and operating backend services in production, ideally with Java, Spring, and relational databases like Postgres.
• A solid understanding of system design, data modeling, and performance optimization for…