athenahealth

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

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

We are looking for a Principal Member of Technical Staff (Principal Software Engineer) to join our Consumer Messaging team within our Patient Experience division. As a PMTS, you will be responsible for a mix of design and implementation of some of our most complex and interesting technical challenges while providing hands-on technical leadership across the multiple teams.

On the technical side, you have a proven track record of building deep expertise in one or more areas while building broad product and technology knowledge beyond your team. You have expertise in cloud architecture, microservices, AWS solutions, corresponding programming language(s), and are happy to dive into legacy Perl codebases when needed. You have experience leading the building of brand-new products as well as leading rearchitectures in inherited legacy code and are comfortable leading teams through the different operational strategies accordingly.

On the leadership side, you bring expertise in industry best practices. You will advise on all aspects of design, implementation, quality, and team practices. You possess the burning desire to build effective teams and provide hands-on technical mentorship to grow skills of more junior emerging technical leaders. Not satisfied with the status quo, you proactively lead and partner to continuously improve. To improve quality, you help lead retrospectives and seek other ways to improve the team’s ability to deliver high quality software. You are also a good communicator and relationship builder, both internally and in working with external partners and vendors.

The Team

The patient experience is focused on our patients; striving to ensure patients with providers in the athena ecosystem will be empowered to seamlessly manage their health and wellness throughout life as active partners with their healthcare team. The Patient Experience (PEX) division is dedicated to transforming how patients interact with healthcare. Our goal is to build innovative software solutions that give patients unprecedented control over their health journey while streamlining workflows for healthcare staff.

What We Do

• Patient Empowerment: We create award-winning tools like our mobile app and Patient Portal, enabling patients to schedule appointments, message their providers, pay bills, and easily access their medical records.
• Efficiency Boost: Our software automates outreach, reminders, and check-in processes, freeing up valuable staff time and reducing administrative burdens.
• Beyond the Visit: We foster continuous engagement through telehealth options, automated wellness outreach, and direct patient-staff messaging capabilities.

Why Join the PEX Team?

Be part of a mission-driven team that's shaping the future of healthcare. With PEX, you'll:

• Make a Difference: Develop solutions that tangibly improve patient lives and the healthcare experience.
• Embrace Innovation: Work with cutting-edge technologies like telehealth, messaging and patient engagement platforms.
• Drive Efficiency: Create tools that streamline workflows and reduce frustrations for healthcare providers.

PEX Consumer Messaging: Powering Patient Engagement for Better Results

The Consumer Messaging in the Patient Experience division builds and supports athenaheath’s patient messaging infrastructure that delivers millions of important messages every day to patients. Our technology is implemented with a mix of technologies with most development occurring in our modern Java and AWS microservice-based architecture.

The Consumer Messaging subdivision of PEX specializes in personalized, multi-channel communication that strengthens the relationship between patients and their healthcare providers.

What We Build

• Multi-Channel Communication: We create systems that reach patients where they are – text, email, and phone calls – ensuring important messages are seen and acted upon.
• Automated & Tailored Messaging: From appointment reminders to population health notices, our software automates crucial outreach while enabling tailored, patient-specific messaging.
• Actionable Results: Our solutions are designed to drive patient action, leading to faster payments, timely preventative care, and better health management.

Why Join the PEX Consumer Messaging Team?

• Impactful Work: Directly contribute to improved patient engagement, health outcomes, and smoother practice operations.
• Innovative Technology: Shape the forefront of patient communication with cutting-edge messaging solutions. Our messaging solutions are built on the most modern tech-stack.
• Real-World Results: Be part of a team with proven success, delivering millions of messages monthly with unparalleled engagement rates.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with product managers, business stakeholders, and cross-functional teams to understand requirements and business objectives, then translate into detailed technical specifications and robust architectural designs to be worked on by you or the team.
• Serve as the subject matter expert on our message delivery service (MDS) and broadly in how we integrate with vendors to deliver messages to patients. Handle complex escalations, drive improvements, and interact with external telephony and email service providers to facilitate seamless integrations and troubleshoot issues while providing leadership with clear updates.
• Lead the hands-on design and implementation of other core components, features, and services for consumer messaging system ensuring scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Gain familiarity with our legacy athenaNet system to develop new solutions and resolve customer-reported issues.
• Champion engineering excellence by defining and enforcing best practices within the team.
• Mentor emerging junior technical leaders, fostering their professional development and technical growth.
• Actively contribute to organizational leadership by identifying critical technology, process, or staffing needs.

Required Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience in software development or 8+ years of software development experience with master’s degree
• Experience in a technical leadership role across multiple teams
• Proven experience in designing and developing scalable microservices-based architectures.
• In-depth knowledge of cloud architecture, web programming language(s), AWS, and relational databases (Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL).
• Experience working in Agile environments with demonstrable understanding of SDLC, deployment, and support processes
• Leadership ability and a passion for guiding and mentoring other engineers to improve their technical and software engineering skills
• Comfort with navigating complex decision-making processes within a large organization
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
• Effective written and verbal communication skills – can summarize and communicate technical details clearly and to the right level of detail for the audience and situation
• Ability to regularly work with teams in USA time zones and willingness to jump into occasional technical support issues in off-hours to ensure live-site first

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related STEM field
• Familiarity with Perl, Python, JavaScript, and/or Node.js.
• Strong command of Java and the Spring framework
• Knowledge of Unix/Linux systems

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