Staff Software Engineer, Backend Infrastructure

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 a Staff Backend Infrastructure Engineer to serve as the most senior IC on our small but growing infrastructure team. Our platform is mission-critical and must function 24/7.

In this role, you’ll take ownership of the core systems that keep our platform running. You’ll ensure that our stack and its fundamental components scale smoothly, remain supportable, and deliver the performance our users depend on. This is a highly impactful position with broad scope: you’ll have the opportunity to take on as much complexity as you can handle, drive technical direction, and help shape the future of our infrastructure as the company grows.

We expect candidates will typically have 7+ years of backend/infrastructure engineering experience, with a track record of leading complex projects at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead Technical Projects: Own and drive high-impact backend and infrastructure initiatives, from design through production.
• Architect Scalable Systems: Design and implement distributed, fault-tolerant backend services with an emphasis on performance and resilience.
• Strengthen Infrastructure: Evolve our containerized, cloud-native platform, ensuring observability, reliability, and efficiency at scale.
• Optimize Performance: Profile and tune Java services, improve throughput/latency, and scale systems to handle high-volume workloads.
• Mentor & Guide: Share expertise in backend engineering and infrastructure best practices with other engineers.
• Partner Cross-Functionally: Collaborate with product engineering teams to deliver secure, scalable features and infrastructure improvements.

Minimum Qualification

• Core Backend Expertise
  • Deep proficiency in Java (JDK internals, concurrency, memory management, profiling, tuning).
  • Strong background in building distributed systems (service-to-service communication, replication, consensus, failure handling).
  • Experience with API design (REST/gRPC), serialization formats, and versioning strategies.
• Cloud & Infrastructure
  • Hands-on expertise with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP).
  • Strong knowledge of containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
  • Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or equivalent).
• Systems Engineering
  • Familiarity with event-driven architectures and streaming systems (Kafka, etc).
  • Strong understanding of databases (SQL and NoSQL), transaction models, and distributed data management.
  • Knowledge of caching strategies (Redis, Memcached, etc.) and message queues.
• Observability & Reliability
  • Experience with monitoring, logging, and tracing (DataDog, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK, OpenTelemetry, etc).
  • Strong skills in debugging distributed systems in production.
• Security & Compliance
  • Familiarity with secure coding practices, secrets management, and cloud security models.
  • Knowledge of authentication/authorization frameworks (OAuth2, OIDC, JWT).
• Leadership & Communication
  • Ability to lead design reviews, write technical proposals, and set engineering standards.
  • Track record of mentoring other engineers on backend and infrastructure skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in multi-tenant SaaS architectures.
• Exposure to edge computing, IoT, or real-time data processing.
• Background in performance benchmarking at scale.
• Prior experience in staff/principal engineer roles in a cloud-native environment.

Benefits and Pay

Our headquarters are located in New York City's Union Square. We believe in cross team collaboration. We think good ideas can come from anyone, and we've designed our processes to encourage participation from all. While we take our mission seriously, we don't take ourselves too seriously. We like to host offsites, outings, and team meals where we can connect as people, not just as colleagues. We offer office lunch and a fully stocked snack bar. While we are an in-office culture, we allow up to 2 remote days per week.

Our benefits package for employees includes competitive base compensation along with stock options. The expected annual salary range for this role is $190,000-245,000 USD, depending upon the job level, which will depend on your level of expertise, your experience, and your qualifications. We also provide fully-paid health and dental insurance coverage for all of our employees, along with other health benefits including vision insurance, membership to premium primary and urgent care, and online medical health providers. We also have a take as you need time off policy, in addition to 7 paid holidays and a company wide winter break during the holidays.

EEO Statement

Sage is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

This policy applies to all employment practices within our organization, including hiring, recruiting, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, leave of absence, compensation, benefits, training, and apprenticeship. Sage makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.