Principal Sustaining & Forward Deployed Engineer
About Us
Abacus Insights is transforming how data works for health plans. Our mission is simple: make healthcare data usable, so the people responsible for care and cost decisions can act faster, with confidence. We help health plans break down data silos to create a single, trusted data foundation. That foundation powers better decisions âso plans can improve outcomes, reduce waste, and deliver better experiences for members and providers alike.
Backed by $100M from top investors, weâre tackling big challenges in an industry thatâs ready for change. Our platform enables GenAI use cases by delivering clean, connected, and reliable healthcare data that can support automation, prioritization, and decision workflowsâand itâs why we are leading the way.
Our innovation begins with people. We are bold, curious, and collaborativeâbecause the best ideas come from working together. Ready to make an impact? Join us and let's build the future together.About the role
The Principal Sustaining and Forward Deployed Engineer is a senior individual contributor responsible for production operations, incident response, and postâlaunch system reliability across Abacus Insightsâ platform.
This role blends:
SRE and production operations
SWAT-style deep technical problem solving
Forwardâdeployed, customerâfacing technical work
Handsâon software development and automation
You will own the most complex, ambiguous, and highâimpact production issues, particularly those involving AWS infrastructure, Databricks workloads, and largeâscale data pipelines. You will work directly with customers on escalations and deployments, while ensuring learnings are translated back into durable product and platform improvements.
This is a hands-on role. You are expected to lead technically during incidents, debug live systems, and write production code where it meaningfully improves reliability and operability.
Your day to day
Production Operations & Incident Response
Act as a senior technical escalation point during production incidents
Lead real-time incident triage, mitigation, and recovery efforts
Drive root cause analysis (RCA) with a focus on systemic, long-term fixes
Identify recurring failure patterns and push for architectural or operational improvements
Partner with Customer Success and Engineering to manage customer impact during incidents
Sustaining Engineering & PostâLaunch Ownership
Own post-launch reliability, stability, and operational quality of core systems
Investigate and resolve complex field issues and production defects
Ensure fixes developed during incidents or customer escalations are up streamed into the core product
Improve operational readiness of services through better runbooks, monitoring, and alerting
Reduce operational toil by converting repeated manual work into automation
Forward Deployed / CustomerâFacing Engineering
Engage directly with strategic customers to solve real-world, production-grade technical challenges
Support complex deployments, integrations, and escalations in customer environments
Act as a trusted technical partner to customers during high-impact issues
Translate customer learnings into concrete product, platform, and operational improvements
Contribute to reusable tools, playbooks, and best practices that accelerate future deployments
AWS & Databricks Technical Expertise
Serve as a subject matter expert for AWS-hosted production systems
Troubleshoot and resolve issues across:
AWS compute, storage, networking, IAM, and security
Databricks jobs, clusters, and Spark-based data pipelines
Debug performance degradation, scalability issues, job failures, and data correctness problems
Partner with platform and data teams to harden systems for reliability, scale, and operability
Software Development & Automation
Write production-quality code to:
Automate operational workflows
Improve reliability and observability
Eliminate manual intervention and reduce incident frequency
Contribute primarily in Python, with exposure to JVM-based systems as needed
Review code with a strong emphasis on operability, resiliency, and maintainability
Advocate for âbuild it so it can be operatedâ engineering standards
Technical Leadership & Collaboration
Provide technical leadership without formal authority, influencing design and operational decisions
Mentor engineers through pairing, reviews, and incident leadership
Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Data, and Customer teams
Operate effectively in high-pressure, ambiguous environments, especially during customer-impacting incidents
What you bring to the team
10+ years of experience in software engineering, SRE, sustaining engineering, or production operations
Deep hands-on experience operating production systems in AWS
Strong experience troubleshooting Databricks and large-scale data platforms
Proficiency in Python and experience building production services or tooling
Strong understanding of:
Distributed systems
Incident management and RCA practices
Monitoring, alerting, and observability
CI/CD Pipelines that leverage Infrastructure as Code.
Proven ability to own problems end-to-end, from detection to permanent resolution
Excellent communication skills, especially during incidents and customer escalations
Ability to work backward from customer impact to root cause across systems and codebases, delivering fixes in environments with minimal documentation.
Strong instinct for operational risk, with the ability to proactively identify failure modes and harden systems before they impact customers.
What we would like to see, but not required:
Experience in healthcare, health insurance, or regulated data environments
Familiarity with:
Kubernetes (EKS), EMR, Lambda
Spark internals
Snowflake or similar data warehouses
Experience with FHIR, MDM systems, or entity resolution
Prior experience in SWAT, escalation engineering, or tiger-team roles
Experience contributing to or operating within SRE/on-call programs
Compensation: Compensation for this role is based on experience, skills, and location, and includes base salary plus eligibility for performance bonuses and equity grants.
What youâll get in return:
Unlimited paid time off â recharge when you need it
Work from anywhere â flexibility to fit your life
Comprehensive health coverage â multiple plan options to choose from
Equity for every employee â share in our success
Growth-focused environment â your development matters here
Home office setup allowance â one-time support to get you started
Monthly cell phone allowance â stay connected with ease#LI-MS1
Our Commitment as an Equal Opportunity Employer
As a mission-led technology company helping to drive better healthcare outcomes, Abacus Insights believes that the best innovation and value we can bring to our customers comes from diverse ideas, thoughts, experiences, and perspectives. Therefore, we dedicate resources to building diverse teams and providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants. Abacus prohibits discrimination and harassment regarding race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.
At the heart of who we are is a commitment to continuously and intentionally building an inclusive cultureâone that empowers every team member across the globe to do their best work and bring their authentic selves. We carry that same commitment into our hiring process, aiming to create an interview experience where you feel comfortable and confident showcasing your strengths. If thereâs anything we can do to support thatâbig or smallâplease let us know.
Apply Now
Abacus Insights is transforming how data works for health plans. Our mission is simple: make healthcare data usable, so the people responsible for care and cost decisions can act faster, with confidence. We help health plans break down data silos to create a single, trusted data foundation. That foundation powers better decisions âso plans can improve outcomes, reduce waste, and deliver better experiences for members and providers alike.
Backed by $100M from top investors, weâre tackling big challenges in an industry thatâs ready for change. Our platform enables GenAI use cases by delivering clean, connected, and reliable healthcare data that can support automation, prioritization, and decision workflowsâand itâs why we are leading the way.
Our innovation begins with people. We are bold, curious, and collaborativeâbecause the best ideas come from working together. Ready to make an impact? Join us and let's build the future together.About the role
The Principal Sustaining and Forward Deployed Engineer is a senior individual contributor responsible for production operations, incident response, and postâlaunch system reliability across Abacus Insightsâ platform.
This role blends:
SRE and production operations
SWAT-style deep technical problem solving
Forwardâdeployed, customerâfacing technical work
Handsâon software development and automation
You will own the most complex, ambiguous, and highâimpact production issues, particularly those involving AWS infrastructure, Databricks workloads, and largeâscale data pipelines. You will work directly with customers on escalations and deployments, while ensuring learnings are translated back into durable product and platform improvements.
This is a hands-on role. You are expected to lead technically during incidents, debug live systems, and write production code where it meaningfully improves reliability and operability.
Your day to day
Production Operations & Incident Response
Act as a senior technical escalation point during production incidents
Lead real-time incident triage, mitigation, and recovery efforts
Drive root cause analysis (RCA) with a focus on systemic, long-term fixes
Identify recurring failure patterns and push for architectural or operational improvements
Partner with Customer Success and Engineering to manage customer impact during incidents
Sustaining Engineering & PostâLaunch Ownership
Own post-launch reliability, stability, and operational quality of core systems
Investigate and resolve complex field issues and production defects
Ensure fixes developed during incidents or customer escalations are up streamed into the core product
Improve operational readiness of services through better runbooks, monitoring, and alerting
Reduce operational toil by converting repeated manual work into automation
Forward Deployed / CustomerâFacing Engineering
Engage directly with strategic customers to solve real-world, production-grade technical challenges
Support complex deployments, integrations, and escalations in customer environments
Act as a trusted technical partner to customers during high-impact issues
Translate customer learnings into concrete product, platform, and operational improvements
Contribute to reusable tools, playbooks, and best practices that accelerate future deployments
AWS & Databricks Technical Expertise
Serve as a subject matter expert for AWS-hosted production systems
Troubleshoot and resolve issues across:
AWS compute, storage, networking, IAM, and security
Databricks jobs, clusters, and Spark-based data pipelines
Debug performance degradation, scalability issues, job failures, and data correctness problems
Partner with platform and data teams to harden systems for reliability, scale, and operability
Software Development & Automation
Write production-quality code to:
Automate operational workflows
Improve reliability and observability
Eliminate manual intervention and reduce incident frequency
Contribute primarily in Python, with exposure to JVM-based systems as needed
Review code with a strong emphasis on operability, resiliency, and maintainability
Advocate for âbuild it so it can be operatedâ engineering standards
Technical Leadership & Collaboration
Provide technical leadership without formal authority, influencing design and operational decisions
Mentor engineers through pairing, reviews, and incident leadership
Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Data, and Customer teams
Operate effectively in high-pressure, ambiguous environments, especially during customer-impacting incidents
What you bring to the team
10+ years of experience in software engineering, SRE, sustaining engineering, or production operations
Deep hands-on experience operating production systems in AWS
Strong experience troubleshooting Databricks and large-scale data platforms
Proficiency in Python and experience building production services or tooling
Strong understanding of:
Distributed systems
Incident management and RCA practices
Monitoring, alerting, and observability
CI/CD Pipelines that leverage Infrastructure as Code.
Proven ability to own problems end-to-end, from detection to permanent resolution
Excellent communication skills, especially during incidents and customer escalations
Ability to work backward from customer impact to root cause across systems and codebases, delivering fixes in environments with minimal documentation.
Strong instinct for operational risk, with the ability to proactively identify failure modes and harden systems before they impact customers.
What we would like to see, but not required:
Experience in healthcare, health insurance, or regulated data environments
Familiarity with:
Kubernetes (EKS), EMR, Lambda
Spark internals
Snowflake or similar data warehouses
Experience with FHIR, MDM systems, or entity resolution
Prior experience in SWAT, escalation engineering, or tiger-team roles
Experience contributing to or operating within SRE/on-call programs
Compensation: Compensation for this role is based on experience, skills, and location, and includes base salary plus eligibility for performance bonuses and equity grants.
What youâll get in return:
Unlimited paid time off â recharge when you need it
Work from anywhere â flexibility to fit your life
Comprehensive health coverage â multiple plan options to choose from
Equity for every employee â share in our success
Growth-focused environment â your development matters here
Home office setup allowance â one-time support to get you started
Monthly cell phone allowance â stay connected with ease#LI-MS1
Our Commitment as an Equal Opportunity Employer
As a mission-led technology company helping to drive better healthcare outcomes, Abacus Insights believes that the best innovation and value we can bring to our customers comes from diverse ideas, thoughts, experiences, and perspectives. Therefore, we dedicate resources to building diverse teams and providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants. Abacus prohibits discrimination and harassment regarding race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.
At the heart of who we are is a commitment to continuously and intentionally building an inclusive cultureâone that empowers every team member across the globe to do their best work and bring their authentic selves. We carry that same commitment into our hiring process, aiming to create an interview experience where you feel comfortable and confident showcasing your strengths. If thereâs anything we can do to support thatâbig or smallâplease let us know.
Apply Now