Lead Backend Engineer (Virtual Primary Care Platform)

About us

LifeMD is a leading digital healthcare company committed to expanding access to virtual care, pharmacy services, and diagnostics by making them more affordable and convenient for all. Focused on both treatment and prevention, our unique care model is designed to optimize the patient experience and improve outcomes across more than 200 health concerns.

To support our expanding patient base, LifeMD leverages a vertically-integrated, proprietary digital care platform, a 50-state affiliated medical group, a 22,500-square-foot affiliated pharmacy, and a U.S.-based patient care center. Our company — with offices in New York City; Greenville, SC; and Huntington Beach, CA — is powered by a dynamic team of passionate professionals. From clinicians and technologists to creatives and analysts, we're united by a shared mission to revolutionize healthcare. Employees enjoy a collaborative and inclusive work environment, hybrid work culture, and numerous opportunities for growth. Want your work to matter? Join us in building a future of accessible, innovative, and compassionate care.

About the role

We’re looking for a Lead Backend Engineer to help evolve and scale our VPC platform. You’ll lead by example in designing and implementing reliable, secure, and well-structured backend systems, while mentoring developers and partnering closely with product, QA, and operations teams. You’ll also play a key role in defining and enforcing our software development lifecycle (SDLC) — ensuring all engineering work is delivered through clear requirements, peer review, testing, and release management practices. Over time, you’ll take end-to-end ownership of core system components such as scheduling, task management, notifications, and workflow orchestration. Make sure they remain performant, maintainable, and compliant as we grow.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, build, and optimize backend services that power scheduling, task management, and provider-patient workflows
• Define and evolve platform APIs, data models, and service boundaries across our Node.js-based services
• Collaborate with product, QA, and front-end teams to deliver features that directly impact patient and provider experience
• Champion and continuously improve the company-wide SDLC — from requirements gathering and code review to automated testing, deployment, and post-release monitoring
• Mentor developers on design patterns, code quality, testing, and observability best practices
• Partner with DevOps and Security to ensure high availability, resilience, and SOC-2/HIPAA compliance across the stack
• Lead technical reviews and help shape the roadmap for core backend domains
• Improve internal documentation, migration strategies, and coding standards for the next generation of LifeMD’s backend systems

Requirements

Basic Qualifications:

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience
• 5+ years of experience in backend development
• Strong proficiency in Node.js/TypeScript, MongoDB (or similar RDBMS), and Redis / message queues (BullMQ, SQS, etc.)
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, asynchronous processing, and API design
• Hands-on experience building event-driven architectures and integrating with third-party services (EHRs, pharmacies, telehealth APIs)
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and container orchestration (ECS, Docker, or Kubernetes)
• Comfortable balancing strategic architecture decisions with hands-on coding and code reviews

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working in regulated or healthcare-adjacent environments (SOC-2, HIPAA)

• Background experience with GraphQL, gRPC, or service federation
• Experience leading migrations from monoliths to microservices
• Background in workflow engines or job scheduling systems
• Interest in mentoring, process improvement, and helping to build an engineering culture of excellence
• Excellent communication and leadership skills — able to partner cross-functionally and influence without authority

Benefits

• Salary Range: $180,000-$200,000
• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (401k, IRA)
• Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
• Unlimited PTO Policy
• Paid Holidays
• Short Term & Long Term Disability
• Training & Development