Principal Software Engineer (Full Stack, Backend-Focused)

Arcadia • Boston, MA

4d • $200,000 - $240,000 • Remote

About The Position

We’re a team of fiercely driven individuals committed to making healthcare more sustainable—and we’re looking for passionate people to help us get there. For more information, visit arcadia.io . Why This Role Is Important to Arcadia Arcadia’s mission is to improve healthcare outcomes through better data and smarter technology. A critical pillar of this mission is the User Management system , which governs authentication, authorization, and user provisioning across all Arcadia’s applications. We’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to take technical ownership of this area—leading the rearchitecture and implementation of a robust, scalable, and secure access control framework. By the time you join, the team will have completed key architectural planning decisions; your focus will be on translating that architecture into reality. This is a backend-leaning full stack role (approximately 60/40) requiring deep distributed systems expertise and an ability to balance implementation detail with architectural vision. What Success Looks Like In 3 months - Ramp up on the existing User Management system, including authentication (Auth0, SAML 2.0), authorization models, and event-driven user provisioning workflows - Complete design handoff for the new access and grants architecture, collaborating closely with product and platform teams to understand business and security requirements - Begin staged implementation of the new system, focusing on core backend services and foundational APIs In 6 months - Lead the implementation of a database-backed access control framework that replaces legacy patterns and improves performance, consistency, and scalability - Drive integration of new user and access models into key Arcadia applications, ensuring minimal disruption for internal and external users - Collaborate with SRE and infrastructure teams to strengthen IaC, deployment automation, and observability for User Management services In 12 months - Own and operate a fully modernized User Management system that delivers secure, reliable, and high-performance authentication and authorization at scale - Introduce a centralized JWT validation and API gateway strategy to unify access control across services and reduce duplication of logic - Establish technical and operational excellence practices—measurable improvements in reliability, latency, and operational efficiency - Mentor engineers and guide teams across Arcadia in secure, distributed, and scalable system design

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional full-stack software engineering experience with a focus on backend and distributed systems
• Proven success building and scaling identity and access management systems , including authentication (SAML 2.0, OAuth2, JWT) and fine-grained authorization frameworks
• Expertise in TypeScript , Node.js/NestJS , and modern React/Angular development for full stack delivery
• Strong command of cloud architecture (AWS preferred) and IaC practices with Terraform
• Deep experience with relational and NoSQL data stores , designing for vertical & horizontal scalability and high availability
• Demonstrated ability to own complex systems from design through rollout and post-release operation , with strong attention to quality and reliability
• Excellent collaboration skills and the ability to work across engineering, product, and SRE teams to deliver cohesive, secure systems
• Strong communication and architectural reasoning skills—able to balance pragmatism with long-term technical health
• Passion for mission-driven work improving healthcare outcomes and enabling data-driven care delivery

Nice To Haves

• Experience modernizing identity and access systems or other critical, cross-cutting platform services
• Familiarity with API gateway design, centralized JWT validation, and event-driven architectures
• Exposure to data streaming or message-driven systems (Kafka, Kinesis, SNS/SQS)
• Experience in healthcare technology, HIPAA compliance, or other regulated data environments
• Polyglot engineering experience—comfort working across multiple languages and frameworks (e.g., Python, Java, Go) when solving complex distributed system challenges
• Experience working with high-scale analytics platforms or distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Apache Spark jobs), especially in environments integrating operational and analytical data pipelines

Responsibilities

• Leading the rearchitecture and implementation of the User Management platform —the foundation for authentication, authorization, and access control across Arcadia products
• Building backend services and APIs (NestJS, TypeScript, PostgreSQL) supporting secure, multi-tenant access models
• Designing distributed, event-driven systems to synchronize user data and access events across Arcadia applications
• Driving modernization of existing authentication and provisioning flows (Auth0, SAML 2.0, OAuth2, JWT)
• Managing cloud infrastructure through Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform) and AWS-native services (ECS, S3, SNS, Aurora)
• Defining SLOs and designing telemetry for key features, ensuring robust monitoring, canary, and standard rollout strategies
• Partnering with cross-functional stakeholders—including Product, Security, and SRE —to ensure alignment between technical execution and organizational priorities
• Providing leadership, mentorship, and clarity in complex, ambiguous problem spaces
• Joining the engineering on-call rotation , contributing to the reliability and operational excellence of the User Management platform and related services
• Ensuring that documentation, operational runbooks, and best practices are well maintained and available for peers and downstream teams

Benefits

• The opportunity to own one of Arcadia’s most critical platform domains and drive its evolution for scale and reliability
• A mission-driven culture where your work improves patient outcomes and healthcare delivery
• Competitive compensation, comprehensive benefits, and Flexible Time Off (~22-day company average)
• A collaborative, remote-friendly engineering culture that values innovation, curiosity, and technical excellence

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed