Backend / Platform Engineer

Role Overview

You will be responsible for building, maintaining and productionizing the backend infrastructure of VAMS ATLAS™. The platform must support deterministic scientific computation, reproducible pipeline execution, immutable/versioned reference artifacts, PostgreSQL-backed registries, asynchronous computational workloads, API services, audit trails, and secure integration with frontend applications.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain backend services and APIs supporting the VAMS BIOME ecosystem.
• Own and extend the ATLAS PostgreSQL data layer, including registries for samples, sequencing runs, and analysis metadata.
• Implement and maintain the VAMS ATLAS Reference Artifact Registry.
• Build and maintain the execution layer connecting backend services with computational/bioinformatics pipelines.
• Ensure auditability and provenance for every ATLAS run to reconstruct analysis.
• Develop structured report objects for web, mobile, and clinician-facing interfaces.
• Operate and evolve the cloud execution architecture using AWS, S3, and Docker.
• Implement secure engineering practices across the backend.

Requirements

• Strong practical experience with Python and modern API frameworks like FastAPI.
• Expertise in PostgreSQL, SQL, and relational schema design.
• Proficiency with Docker, Linux, and Git.
• Experience with AWS or equivalent cloud infrastructure and object storage like S3.
• Solid understanding of CI/CD, automated testing, and asynchronous processing.

Skills

• Python
• FastAPI
• PostgreSQL
• AWS
• Docker

Nice to Have

• Experience in Bioinformatics, Genomics, or Microbiome data.
• Knowledge of AWS Batch, ECS/Fargate, or Lambda.
• Experience with Health-tech or clinical software.
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration and reproducible computational pipelines.