Staff Data Engineer

Opportunity Overview:

We're seeking a Staff Engineer to help define and drive the technical vision of our Data Platform team as we scale our infrastructure, services, and architecture. This role is ideal for someone who blends deep technical expertise with strategic thinking and cross-functional influence.

As a Staff Engineer, you'll lead platform-wide design decisions, shape technical standards, and guide squads through complex engineering challenges. You'll partner closely with other data and analytics engineers, architects, product leaders, and business stakeholders to evolve our data infrastructure in support of high-trust, scalable, and business-aligned outcomes.

You will also serve as a technical mentor and force multiplier across teams; raising the bar for data engineering excellence and accelerating the maturity of our data platform capabilities.

What you'll do:

• Define and drive architectural strategy and technical design across squads, ensuring scalability, reliability, and alignment with business needs
• Own the long-term technical roadmap for the Data Platform, balancing immediate needs with future-proofing for growth
• Serve as a trusted advisor and design authority, guiding critical decisions on data storage formats, processing frameworks, and platform-wide capabilities
• Drive cross-squad initiatives such as observability frameworks, data contract enforcement, or schema governance
• Continuously evaluate and improve platform reliability, maintainability, and cost-efficiency; reducing manual effort through automation, observability, and scalable design patterns
• Champion a high standard of engineering rigor – through documentation, testing, operational readiness, and incident prevention
• Mentor and coach engineers across squads, providing deep technical guidance, architecture support, and career development
• Evaluate emerging technologies and tools to enhance performance, security, developer experience, and total cost of ownership
• Partner with stakeholders across analytics, clinical, product, and operations to ensure the platform meets evolving business needs
• Design self-service tooling and frameworks to enable operational, analytics, and engineering teams to efficiently access, explore, and use governed data assets
• Actively participate in planning, roadmap alignment, and backlog refinement—ensuring technical work aligns with business priorities and unlocks cross-functional velocity
• Define and track KPIs to evaluate platform reliability, performance, and engineering efficiency
• Participate in on-call rotations and support continuous improvement of platform reliability, resilience, and recovery mechanisms

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in data engineering, with demonstrated progression to technically complex and high-impact work
• Proven expertise in designing and operating large-scale data infrastructure, ideally in cloud-based, distributed environments (e.g., AWS, EMR, Glue, Kafka, Iceberg, dbt, MongoDB, Snowflake)
• Fluency in modern data architecture patterns, including medallion/lakehouse models, schema evolution, streaming ingestion, and batch orchestration
• Deep understanding of data access and governance, observability, CI/CD, version control, and incident management principles in a data engineering context
• Experience shaping engineering standards, frameworks, or libraries used across multiple teams
• Exceptional ability to communicate technical strategy to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Track record of mentorship and technical leadership across engineering teams
• Experience working with healthcare data (e.g., claims, EMR) is a plus
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline

Ability to commute/relocate:

• Nacharam, Hyderabad, Telangana*: Reliably commute or planning to relocate before starting work (Preferred)

Interview Process*:

1. Connect with Talent Acquisition for a Preliminary Phone Screening
2. Meet your Hiring Manager
3. Live System Design Exercise 
4. Technical Discussion 
5. Cross Functional Collaboration Interview 

*Subject to change

About ZignaAI, a Cohere Health Company:

Cohere Health's clinical intelligence platform delivers AI-powered solutions that streamline access to quality care by improving payer-provider collaboration, cost containment, and healthcare economics. Cohere Health works with over 660,000 providers and handles over 12 million prior authorization requests annually. Its responsible AI auto-approves up to 90% of requests for millions of health plan members.

With the acquisition of ZignaAI, we've further enhanced our platform by launching our Payment Integrity Suite, anchored by Cohere Validate, an AI-driven clinical and coding validation solution that operates in near real-time. By unifying pre-service authorization data with post-service claims validation, we're creating a transparent healthcare ecosystem that reduces waste, improves payer-provider collaboration and patient outcomes, and ensures providers are paid promptly and accurately.

Cohere Health's innovations continue to receive industry wide recognition. We've been named to the 2025 Inc. 5000 list and in the Gartner Hype Cycle for U.S. Healthcare Payers , and ranked as a Top 5 LinkedIn Startup for 2023 & 2024. Backed by leading investors such as Deerfield Management, Define Ventures, Flare Capital Partners, Longitude Capital, and Polaris Partners, Cohere Health drives more transparent, streamlined healthcare processes, helping patients receive faster, more appropriate care and higher-quality outcomes.

The Coherenauts, as we call ourselves, who succeed here are empathetic teammates who are candid, kind, caring, and embody our core values and principles. We believe that diverse, inclusive teams make the most impactful work. Cohere is deeply invested in ensuring that we have a supportive, growth-oriented environment that works for everyone.

We can't wait to learn more about you and meet you at ZignaAI, a Cohere Health company

Equal Opportunity Statement: 

Cohere Health is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to fostering an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all.  To us, it's personal.