At Advarra, we are passionate about making a difference in the world of clinical
research and advancing human health. With a rich history rooted in ethical
review services combined with innovative technology solutions and deep industry
expertise, we are at the forefront of industry change. A market leader and
pioneer, Advarra breaks the silos that impede clinical research, aligning
patients, sites, sponsors, and CROs in a connected ecosystem to accelerate
trials.
Company Culture
Our employees are the heart of Advarra. They are the key to our success and the
driving force behind our mission and vision. Our values (Patient-Centric,
Ethical, Quality Focused, Collaborative) guide our actions and decisions.
Knowing the impact of our work on trial participants and patients, we act with
urgency and purpose to advance clinical research so that people can live
happier, healthier lives.
At Advarra, we seek to foster an inclusive and collaborative environment where
everyone is treated with respect and diverse perspectives are embraced. Treating
one another, our clients, and clinical trial participants with empathy and care
are key tenets of our culture at Advarra; we are committed to creating a
workplace where each employee is not only valued but empowered to thrive and
make a meaningful impact.
Job Overview Summary
The Staff Software Engineer is a recognized technical expert with deep domain
knowledge, responsible for designing and implementing software architecture for
current and future products. This role evaluates existing and new designs for
quality, scalability, and long-term viability. The Staff Software Engineer
solves highly complex problems in the present while ensuring solutions align
with future strategic initiatives. Additionally, this role influences strategic
direction within the product line, leads technical direction for large
projects/programs, and mentors engineers to elevate overall engineering
excellence.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role responsible for the architecture,
development, and operation of scalable data and AI systems powering clinical
research products. Key responsibilities span document processing and information
extraction, agentic AI applications and orchestration, data modeling and
pipeline engineering, automated testing and CI/CD, model evaluation, and
production observability, with a focus on reliability, performance, and cost
efficiency. We value strong engineering fundamentals, demonstrated ability to
learn quickly, and adaptability to new tools and technologies. Prior experience
with our specific platforms is helpful but not required.
Job Duties & Responsibilities
Drive technical strategy and architecture within one or more product lines,
ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture, standards, and business
objectives defined by architects and leadership.
Own end-to-end architecture for the product line, ensuring systems are
scalable, reliable, and maintainable while adhering to broader organizational
guidelines.
Translate architectural direction into actionable designs and
implementations, bridging high-level strategy (architect) with execution
(engineering teams).
Lead complex, cross-functional, high-impact technical initiatives within the
product line, particularly those spanning multiple teams and/or components.
Ensure consistency and quality of design across teams within the product
line, establishing and reinforcing best practices, patterns, and standards.
Partner closely with architects to implement and refine architectural
direction, providing feedback based on real-world constraints and system
behavior.
Drive resolution of the most complex technical challenges within the product
line, especially those involving ambiguity, scale, or cross-team
dependencies.
Lead product-line-level design reviews, ensuring solutions meet long-term
scalability, performance, and maintainability goals.
Influence prioritization and technical trade-offs within the product line,
aligning engineering decisions with business needs and architectural
guardrails.
Mentor and elevate staff and senior engineers within the product line,
improving system design capability and technical decision-making across
teams.
Identify and address systemic risks and inefficiencies within the product
line, including technical debt, performance bottlenecks, and operational
gaps.
Drive improvements in reliability, observability, and operational excellence
for systems within the product line.
Guide evaluation and adoption of technologies within the product line,
ensuring alignment with architectural standards and long-term strategy.
Champion and drive security strategy within the product line, adhering to
Advarra security guidelines, proactively identifying and addressing
application, and driving remediation efforts based on security scans and
penetration testing results.
Collaborate with cross-functional partners (Product, QA, Support, Cloud) to
ensure cohesive delivery and high-quality outcomes for the product line.
Act as the primary technical authority for the product line, conceiving and
implementing transformative technical solutions with enterprise-wide
implications, ensuring engineering efforts are cohesive, aligned, and
forward-looking.
Architect reliable data pipelines with explicit data contracts, schema
evolution, end-to-end lineage, versioning, and idempotent processing.
Build and productionize information extraction pipelines, agentic AI
applications, and automated evaluation frameworks.
Establish end-to-end observability across data quality, pipeline reliability,
model performance, and inference cost, including longitudinal metrics and
automated regression detection.
Optimize model selection and inference orchestration to balance quality,
latency, throughput, and cost.
Partner with Data Science, Architecture, and Infrastructure teams to drive
delivery and establish reusable engineering patterns, shared tooling, and
clear operational ownership.
Location
This role is open to candidates working remotely in the United States.
Basic Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in information systems, computer science, engineering,
related discipline, or equivalent work experience.
12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time in
senior level roles with increasing technical leadership responsibility.
Proven experience designing and owning architecture for complex, mission
critical distributed systems.
Demonstrated deep expertise in modern backend and/or web technologies (e.g.,
Python, Java, Rails, .NET, Frontend frameworks, distributed systems, APIs,
cloud platforms, databases), with experience guiding technology decisions.
Experience mentoring and developing senior level engineers and influencing
engineering best practices within a team or product area.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience building software in healthcare, life sciences, or other highly
regulated industries (e.g., HIPAA, FDA, or similar compliance environments).
Working knowledge of clinical trial process and medical informatics.
Hands-on experience designing, delivering and applications on AWS, including
use of cloud-native services.
Demonstrated success designing for scale and high availability, including
performance optimization and fault-tolerant system design.
Experience implementing and driving observability practices, including
logging, monitoring, tracing, and alerting in distributed systems.
Experience designing and operating production data pipelines and distributed
data processing systems.
Experience with automated testing, continuous integration and delivery, cloud
deployment, and operational monitoring.
Experience taking AI/ML workflows from prototypes into reliable production
systems.
Strong understanding of data architecture and modeling, schema design and
evolution, data quality management, and data lineage
Physical and Mental Requirements
Sit or stand for extended periods of time at stationary workstation
Regularly carry, raise, and lower objects of up to 10 Lbs.
Learn and comprehend basic instructions
Focus and attention to tasks and responsibilities
Verbal communication; listening and understanding, responding, and speaking
Advarra is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to providing a
workplace that is free from discrimination and harassment of any kind based on
race, color, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related
medical conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity), national origin,
age, disability or genetic information, or any other status or characteristic
protected by federal, state, or local law.
The base salary range for this role is $ 143,559- $ 277,713. Note that salary
may vary based on location, skills, and experience and may vary from the amounts
listed above. This position may also be eligible for a variable bonus in
addition to base salary as well as health coverage, paid holidays, and other
benefits.