Principal Software Engineer, Payer Portal

Salary: $164,000 - 280,000 per year Requirements:

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+ years of engineering experience in a product engineering organization, with demonstrated growth into technical leadership.
• Deep backend experience with distributed systems and a record of designing and delivering production-grade enterprise software.
• Strong Java and Spring Boot backend development experience.
• Experience making and explaining system-level architectural decisions.
• Hands-on production experience with AI coding assistants or agentic development tools, such as Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, or Cursor, including helping teams establish shared usage practices.
• Experience setting engineering standards, code review practices, specification-driven and test-driven development approaches, and testing strategies across multiple teams.
• Experience with PostgreSQL, Oracle, AWS services, Kubernetes, and Terraform; React experience is strongly preferred.
• Ability to work across a complex enterprise monolith and a newer technology platform in parallel.
• Healthcare experience, particularly in revenue cycle management, claims processing, or billing, is a plus.
• Experience improving Agile delivery practices, ideally including adapting processes for AI-assisted development.

• Lead the design, development, and delivery of high-quality software in an agile, cross-functional team, making technical decisions aligned with architecture standards and business goals.
• Address complex system challenges across an enterprise monolith and newer platform services, ensuring production readiness through sound testing, reliability, observability, and operational practices.
• Establish and improve engineering standards across teams, including code reviews and specification-driven and test-driven development.
• Work with product and engineering stakeholders to identify risks, clarify tradeoffs, and enable timely decisions.
• Mentor engineers and help senior engineers become more independent and impactful.
• Integrate AI coding assistants and agentic development tools into team workflows, assess their suitability, and establish shared practices for responsible use in design, coding, testing, and review.
• Explain complex technical topics clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Create clarity around scope, dependencies, and delivery risks to support product and engineering collaboration.
• Contribute to planning, estimation, and prioritization as needed.
• Participate in design reviews, retrospectives, and continuous improvement activities.
• Assist with hiring, interviewing, and onboarding when needed.
• Share technical knowledge through mentorship, documentation, and team learning sessions.
• Strengthen Agile delivery practices, including adapting workflows for AI-assisted engineering.

• AI
• AWS
• Backend
• Claude Code
• Copilot
• Cursor
• GitHub
• Support
• Java
• Kubernetes
• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• React
• Spring
• Spring Boot
• Terraform
• Cloud
• DevOps
• LESS
• Spark

More:

We are collaborating with hackajob to connect exceptional professionals with athenahealth. As Principal Software Engineer, you will lead backend software design and delivery for our athenaCollector product in Boston, Massachusetts, in a hybrid work arrangement. athenaCollector is part of the athenaOne platform and supports healthcare organizations with claims submission and follow-up, payment processing and posting, billing, payer connectivity, and exception handling. Our team works across an enterprise monolith and newer platform components to improve automation, reliability, and revenue cycle operations, helping providers focus more on patient care. Our vision is to simplify healthcare through technology and expert services that support accessible, high-quality, sustaina