Backend Engineer, AI Interview Engine (Python)

Surgo Health is building the Behavioral Intelligence layer for healthcare - revealing why people behave as they do, predicting what they will do next, and helping organizations make the decisions that change outcomes.

A Public Benefit Corporation grounded in two decades of global health experience, Surgo generates foundational behavioral data that reveals the unseen why and builds the AI products that power decision-grade insights at population scale - equipping healthcare organizations, funders, and public agencies to act on what actually shapes health outcomes: people's beliefs, motivations, and barriers.

Backed by 40+ peer-reviewed publications and trusted by partners including the Gates Foundation, J&J, Takeda, Pivotal Ventures, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Surgo is building a future where healthcare organizations don't just understand human behavior, but anticipate it.

Role Summary:

We are looking for a Backend Engineer to join the R&D Engineering team building Derin, our AI-powered interview platform. At Derin's core is an interview engine: an LLM agent that conducts conversational interviews with participants over web, WhatsApp/SMS and voice, follows a researcher-designed survey with branching, quotas and screening, probes for depth, and keeps every conversation safe.

You will own major parts of this engine: the survey definition language and its execution, the agent's conversational behavior, the APIs and data that the rest of the platform depends on, and the cloud infrastructure it runs on. This is a hands-on role with real ownership, in a small team where your work reaches thousands of participants quickly.

What you’ll achieve:

• Work AI-first: use AI agents (Claude Code, Cursor and others) throughout your day to design, build, debug and optimize, and help the team keep raising the bar on AI-assisted engineering
• Build and scale the backend of our AI interview engine in Python (FastAPI, serverless on Azure), from API design to production
• Evolve how our surveys are defined and executed, with strong validation
• Shape how our LLM interviewer behaves, and evaluate changes rigorously before they ship
• Integrate messaging, voice and participant-recruitment channels
• Design data models and migrations on PostgreSQL, and expose engine data cleanly to our dashboards, exports and data platform
• Own reliability and observability: automated tests (including deterministic tests of LLM flows), monitoring, tracing and alerting
• Work with infrastructure as code (Terraform), CI/CD and secrets management on Azure
• Build security, privacy and compliance into how we handle sensitive participant data, in a SOC 2 and HIPAA-compliant environment
• Write short design documents for significant changes, and review your teammates' work
• Collaborate closely with product, research scientists, frontend and data engineers

About you:

• You have at least 3 years of backend development experience in Python
• You have proven experience designing and running APIs in production (FastAPI or similar)
• You are strong with relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL, and with ORMs and migrations (SQLAlchemy/SQLModel, Alembic)
• You have built LLM-driven applications in production: prompt design, structured outputs, tool use or agents, and evaluating non-deterministic behavior
• You have hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure (required), including serverless or event-driven architectures (queues, functions)
• You understand and value software engineering best practices: testing (pytest), code review and CI/CD
• Experience with Terraform or with conversational and voice products is a strong plus
• Working knowledge of TypeScript (Node.js/NestJS or React) to contribute across the stack is a plus
• You are AI-native: you use agentic tools such as Claude Code and Cursor every day to design architectures and diagrams, write and review code, debug and improve performance. You know how to set them up (context, rules, MCP servers, subagents) and when not to trust their output. Surgo is an AI-driven company that uses AI for almost everything we do, not only code, and our interview process asks you to show how you work with it
• You hold a University degree in Computer Science or a related field
• You are independent, proactive, and able to deliver features end to end with minimal supervision
• You are fluent in English, both written and spoken, and comfortable working remotely with substantial overlap with US Eastern and UK hours

Location: This is a Türkiye-based role (Istanbul). Surgo is headquartered in Washington, DC, with team members across the US, UK, Türkiye, Brazil and India.

Benefits

What you'll love about Surgo:

• Fantastic, fun and collaborative colleagues; opportunity to solve tough challenges in healthcare
• Ability to be entrepreneurial and tremendous opportunities for growth
• Public Benefit Corporation with an impact and equity mission
• Competitive compensation
• Professional development opportunities

Surgo Health is committed to fair, equitable, and transparent practices. Compensation packages are based on several factors such as skill set, prior relevant experience, education, certifications, and market considerations. In addition to base compensation, individuals may be eligible for annual performance-based bonuses and equity (if applicable). We aim to pay salaries that are competitive, benchmarked against companies that are similar in stage, size, and market to Surgo Health. Our recruiter may be able to share more about our total rewards offerings and the specific salary range for the relevant role during the hiring process.

Our hiring philosophy

We hire for passion and core competencies. We look for problem solvers and lateral thinkers. We love it if you have done different things with your time. If you think you are ideal for this position, write to us even if your experience doesn't match all the requirements listed above.

Equal Opportunity and Diversity Policy

Surgo believes a diverse, inclusive staff makes a stronger team and more impactful organization and we are committed to building and developing this team and environment. Qualified people of all races, ethnicities, cultures, ages, sex, genders, sexual orientation, gender identities and expressions, languages, social class, marital status, religions, veterans status, and disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.