Senior Python Developer

About MedaVida

MedaVida is building the payments-enabled operating system for modern cash-pay
healthcare. Our platform connects credential verification, patient care, prescriptions,
payments, suppliers, communication, and practice growth within one unified ecosystem.

We are a fast-moving healthcare technology and fintech startup preparing to bring
multiple products to market. We are looking for a technically strong Senior Python
Developer who can take on our hardest, most ambiguous backend problems — money
movement, clinical data integrity, credential verification — and ship them correctly,
not just quickly.

The role

We're looking for a Senior Python Developer to own the backend work that doesn't
come with a clean spec: the tickets where the hard part is figuring out the right design,
not just writing the code. Our stack is Django/DRF over Postgres, integrated with a
Medplum FHIR clinical core and multiple payment processors — the kind of system where a
shortcut in one place quietly breaks correctness somewhere else, and where getting it
right the first time matters more than getting it out the door first.

We're a startup, which means responsibilities don't stay in one lane. You'll shift
between Development, Review, Product Requirements definition, and Testing as the moment
calls for it — that's a feature of how we work, not a scope-creep exception. You'll also
be a regular source of review and guidance for less experienced engineers picking up
work adjacent to yours, without that being a formal management responsibility.

If you're the person other engineers already bring the "I'm not sure this is even the
right approach" problems to, this role is built for exactly that.

What you'll do

• Own the hardest backend tickets. Complex, ambiguous work — payment-gateway integrations, money-movement correctness, data-model design, cross-system integrations — where the primary job is judgment, not typing.
• Design before you build. For work this consequential, that means reasoning through edge cases, failure modes, and existing invariants before committing to an approach — and being able to explain that reasoning to a reviewer or a teammate.
• Write tests that actually prove correctness, not just tests that pass. Money and clinical-data code gets held to a higher bar here than a typical CRUD endpoint.
• Review other engineers' work, including AI-drafted PRs on more complex tickets, and give feedback that helps them build the same judgment over time.
• Say when something's wrong, even if it's already shipped or already agreed on. Surfacing a real problem late is still better than staying quiet to avoid friction.

What you need

• A real track record shipping production Python/Django backend systems, including work that required genuine judgment on ambiguous problems — not just following a clear spec. This is the one non-negotiable requirement for this role.
• Strong command of Python and a relational database (we run Postgres) — comfortable reasoning about query performance, migrations, and data integrity, not just ORM syntax.

Nice to have — things that make you a strong fit, not things you must already have

• Experience with Django REST Framework specifically, or a comparable Python web framework at production scale.
• Experience with payments, billing, or other systems where correctness failures cost real money — the instinct to be paranoid in the right places.
• Experience integrating third-party or partner APIs (payment processors, external data sources, webhooks) and handling their failure modes gracefully.
• Comfort giving direct, useful code review to engineers earlier in their career.
• Curiosity about system design beyond the ticket in front of you — how a change here affects something three files away.

How we work

• Hours: 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM EST.
• Weekends: Not the norm, and we mean that as a design goal, not a hope. If a weekend gets worked, we treat that as a personal and managerial failure first — something to fix upstream, not shrug off — and every effort is made to avoid it. That said, we're a startup: the team is expected to pivot to meet real opportunities, sometimes on short notice, and that occasionally means weekend work.

Why this role

If you're a strong senior engineer who wants your hardest problems to actually be hard —
not busywork dressed up as a senior title — this is that. You'll be trusted with the
work that has real consequences if it's wrong, working directly with the people who
built the system, on a codebase that's still young enough to shape.

Location: Remote
Compensation: We're a startup with real product already in the market, and we offer
competitive salaries. We're also in the process of setting up an Employee Stock Option
Plan (ESOP), with vesting backdated to begin on your employment start date.