Senior Backend Engineer - Scoring & Computation Engine (m/f/d)

Are you ready to join us?

About the role

You will build the core engine that powers our rankings and benchmarks for hospitals worldwide: a versioned, fully reproducible computation layer that transforms harmonized metrics into comparable scores.

The focus of this role is algorithmic computation, mathematical correctness, and system reproducibility—web application development is a limited aspect of this system. As the senior technical owner for this area, you will design how scoring definitions, formula trees, category mappings, and peer-group logic are modeled as data and executed deterministically over time.

Key Responsibilities

• Engine Architecture: Design and build the core scoring engine—a typed, versioned computation graph (DAG) executed deterministically with clear boundary contracts.
• Methodology as Data: Model complex business logic (formula trees, categorical mappings, peer selection, and comparability adjustments) as versioned, declarative data structures.
• Determinism & Lineage: Own system lineage, versioning, and execution auditability end-to-end, ensuring any score can be recalculated identically at any future date.
• Internal Tools & API Layer: Build clean, typed services and contracts for our internal methodology workbench and downstream consumer applications.
• Testing & Quality Discipline: Establish rigorous testing practices (e.g., golden file testing, property-based testing, regression validation) to prevent calculation drift.
• Technical Ownership: Shape architecture, drive trade-offs between execution speed and cost, set code review standards, and mentor joining engineers.

Qualifications

Core Requirements (Must-Haves)

• Graph Algorithms & Engine Concepts: Deep expertise in modeling and evaluating expression trees and dependency graphs (e.g., ASTs, DAGs, cycle detection, topological sorting, memoization, and selective recomputation).
• Advanced Python & Typing Discipline: Mastery of modern Python with strict typing (mypy/pyright), explicit testing discipline, and clean packaging practices.
• Deterministic System Design: Proven experience building auditable, reproducible systems using immutable execution records, versioned schemas, and explicit data lineage tracking.
• Declarative Logic & Domain Modeling: Experience treating business logic as versioned data (e.g., typed schemas, expression trees, rules engines, or domain-specific configurations).
• Typed API & Schema Design: Demonstrated ability to design, version, and operate production backend contracts and schemas for upstream workflow engines and downstream applications.

Nice-to-Haves (What Will Make You Stand Out)

• Web Frameworks & Orchestration: Production experience with FastAPI (or similar async frameworks) and workflow tools (e.g., Dagster, Prefect, or Airflow).
• Performance Profiling: Practical experience analyzing execution memory footprints, CPU profiles, or query efficiency against columnar data warehouses.
• Cloud Infrastructure: Familiarity with deploying, monitoring, and operating containerized calculation microservices on AWS.

Your Profile

• Degree: Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.
• Experience: 5+ years in backend software engineering building computation engines, rules platforms, or complex data-intensive backend systems; including a sustained period within one organization seeing a core system through build → launch → iteration.
• Domain Knowledge: Healthcare or benchmarking domain experience is a plus (basic understanding of healthcare KPIs, quality metrics, or benchmarking concepts; familiarity with hospital rating systems, medical classification, or complex scoring methodologies is especially valuable).
• Mindset: Strong analytical and mathematical mindset, with a proven ability to translate complex domain logic and formulas into clean, deterministic software abstractions.
• Languages: Fluent in English, German is a plus.
• Working Style: Highly structured, detail-oriented, and motivated to collaborate closely with methodology experts, analysts, and cross-functional engineers in an international environment.

What we offer

• Work from abroad up to 30 calendar days a year
• Hybrid work and flex-time
• International team and social events
• Subsidized urban mobility and access to fitness and wellness options
• Free access to Langdock and all its amazing functionalities
• Career & training opportunities
• Attractive locations and modern offices
• Mental health support with OpenUp