Senior Software Engineer, Specialties

Join us as we work to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

Join athenahealth as a Senior Software Engineer in the Specialties Zone, where you’ll design and build scalable, secure, and maintainable software that powers clinical workflows for specialty practices. In this Boston-based hybrid role, you’ll work as a full-stack engineer and own solutions across the entire software development lifecycle—from technical design and implementation through testing, deployment, monitoring, and production support. You’ll partner closely with product, design, and adjacent engineering teams to deliver high-impact capabilities that help healthcare providers work more efficiently and deliver better patient care.

Team Summary

The Specialties Zone builds mission-critical clinical solutions used by healthcare providers every day. Our products support the distinct needs of specialty practices and care settings—including Women’s Health, Behavioral Health, Ambulatory Surgery Centers, Physical Therapy, Orthopedics, and more—helping providers simplify complex workflows, make informed clinical decisions, and deliver efficient, personalized care.

Our collaborative, mission-driven team is passionate about improving healthcare outcomes through technology. We foster an environment of continuous learning and innovation in which engineers take ownership of quality across the full software development lifecycle. We are also evolving how we build software—shifting from manual, ticket-by-ticket implementation toward a spec-first, AI-accelerated workflow in which engineers focus on domain correctness, architecture, system constraints, and edge cases.

You’ll work closely with product, design, and adjacent engineering teams to deliver practical, scalable solutions aligned with customer and clinical needs.

Essential Job Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and support high-quality software as part of an agile, cross-functional product team.
• Work as a full-stack engineer across frontend, backend, APIs, data, and cloud infrastructure.
• Own features across the entire software development lifecycle, including requirements refinement, technical design, implementation, automated testing, deployment, monitoring, troubleshooting, and ongoing production support.
• Develop strong knowledge of specialty clinical workflows to improve technical decision-making, ticket triage, dependency mapping, and cross-team coordination.
• Contribute to and help evolve team practices, including design reviews, feature readouts, agile ceremonies, code review standards, and testing strategy.
• Use Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and similar AI-assisted or agentic development tools throughout the software development lifecycle, including requirements refinement, codebase exploration, implementation planning, code generation, refactoring, test creation, debugging, documentation, and first-pass code review.
• Critically evaluate, debug, and refine AI-generated code, tests, designs, and recommendations rather than accepting outputs at face value.
• Mentor other engineers on effective engineering practices and the responsible use of AI tools, including prompt design, context management, output verification, and recognizing when an LLM-based tool should not be used.

Additional Job Responsibilities

• Build and maintain automated unit, integration, and end-to-end tests as part of feature development.
• Use AI-assisted approaches to strengthen testing, including test generation, coverage analysis, identification of edge cases, and validation of expected behavior.
• Explore and apply technologies such as GraphQL to extend product and platform capabilities.
• Monitor application health and performance and use AI-assisted tools to accelerate troubleshooting and root-cause analysis.
• Identify opportunities to use Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and other LLM-powered tools to reduce repetitive engineering work, accelerate codebase understanding, improve test coverage, and shorten development feedback cycles.

Expected Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 4+ years of software engineering experience in a product development organization.
• Strong full-stack development experience, including backend services, frontend applications, APIs, data persistence, and production support.
• Solid backend development experience using Java or modern OOP languages.
• Hands-on experience with JavaScript, React, HTML, CSS, and modern frontend architecture.
• Experience working with Perl and/or Python in production environments, including the ability to understand, maintain, extend, and modernize existing applications.
• Experience designing, building, and supporting APIs using technologies such as REST and GraphQL.
• Experience with relational databases, data modeling, Oracle and PostgreSQL.
• Experience working with distributed systems and evolving application architectures, including monolithic, microservices, modern, and legacy production environments

Expected Compensation

The base salary range shown reflects the full range for this role from minimum to maximum. At athenahealth, base pay depends on multiple factors, including job-related experience, relevant knowledge and skills, how your qualifications compare to others in similar roles, and geographical market rates. Base pay is only one part of our competitive Total Rewards package - depending on role eligibility, we offer both short and long-term incentives by way of an annual discretionary bonus plan, variable compensation plan, and equity plans.

About athenahealth

Our vision: In an industry that becomes more complex by the day, we stand for simplicity. We offer IT solutions and expert services that eliminate the daily hurdles preventing healthcare providers from focusing entirely on their patients — powered by our vision to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

Our company culture: Our talented  employees — or athenistas, as we call ourselves — spark the innovation and passion needed to accomplish our vision. We are a diverse group of dreamers and do-ers with unique knowledge, expertise, backgrounds, and perspectives. We unite as mission-driven problem-solvers with a deep desire to achieve our vision and make our time here count. Our award-winning culture is built around shared values of inclusiveness, accountability, and support.

Our DEI commitment: Our vision of accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all requires addressing the inequities that stand in the way. That's one reason we prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of our business, from attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce to maintaining an inclusive environment for athenistas, our partners, customers and the communities where we work and serve.

What we can do for you:

Along with health and financial benefits, athenistas enjoy perks specific to each location, including commuter support, employee assistance programs, tuition assistance, employee resource groups, and collaborative  workspaces  — some offices even welcome dogs.

We also encourage a better work-life balance for athenistas with our flexibility. While we know in-office collaboration is critical to our vision, we recognize that not all work needs to be done within an office environment, full-time. With consistent communication and digital collaboration tools, athenahealth enables employees to find a balance that feels fulfilling and productive for each individual situation.

In addition to our traditional benefits and perks, we sponsor events throughout the year, including book clubs, external speakers, and hackathons. We provide athenistas with a company culture based on learning, the support of an engaged team, and an inclusive environment where all employees are valued.

Learn more about our culture and benefits here: athenahealth.com/careers

https://www.athenahealth.com/careers/equal-opportunity