Senior Sustaining & Forward Deployed Engineer

About UsAbacus 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—so plans can improve outcomes, reduce waste, and deliver better experiences for members and providers alike. Backed by $100M from top investors, we’re tackling big challenges in an industry that’s ready for change. Our platform enables GenAI use cases by delivering clean, connected, and reliable healthcare data to support automation, prioritization, and decision workflows—and it’s why we are leading the way.Our innovation begins with people. We are bold, curious, and collaborative—because the best ideas come from working together. We embrace the thoughtful use of AI and automation to drive innovation and efficiency, and we look for individuals who are curious and adaptable—those excited to leverage emerging technologies to enhance how we work—while keeping human insight, connection, and our clients at the center of every decision.Ready to make an impact? Join us and let’s build the future together.About the roleThe Senior Sustaining & Forward Deployed Engineer is a senior individual contributor responsible for production operations, incident response, and post‑launch system reliability across Abacus Insights’ platform.This role blends:SRE and production operationsSWAT-style deep technical problem solvingForward‑deployed, customer‑facing technical workHands‑on software development and automationYou will own the most complex, ambiguous, and high‑impact production issues, particularly those involving AWS infrastructure, Databricks workloads, and large‑scale 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 dayProduction Operations & Incident ResponseAct as a senior technical escalation point during production incidentsLead real-time incident triage, mitigation, and recovery effortsDrive root cause analysis (RCA) with a focus on systemic, long-term fixesIdentify recurring failure patterns and push for architectural or operational improvementsPartner with Customer Success and Engineering to manage customer impact during incidentsSustaining Engineering & Post‑Launch OwnershipOwn post-launch reliability, stability, and operational quality of core systemsInvestigate and resolve complex field issues and production defectsEnsure fixes developed during incidents or customer escalations are up streamed into the core productImprove operational readiness of services through better runbooks, monitoring, and alertingReduce operational toil by converting repeated manual work into automationForward Deployed / Customer‑Facing EngineeringEngage directly with strategic customers to solve real-world, production-grade technical challengesSupport complex deployments, integrations, and escalations in customer environmentsAct as a trusted technical partner to customers during high-impact issuesTranslate customer learnings into concrete product, platform, and operational improvementsContribute to reusable tools, playbooks, and best practices that accelerate future deploymentsAWS & Databricks Technical ExpertiseServe as a subject matter expert for AWS-hosted production systemsTroubleshoot and resolve issues across:AWS compute, storage, networking, IAM, and securityDatabricks jobs, clusters, and Spark-based data pipelinesDebug performance degradation, scalability issues, job failures, and data correctness problemsPartner with platform and data teams to harden systems for reliability, scale, and operabilitySoftware Development & AutomationWrite production-quality code to:Automate operational workflowsImprove reliability and observabilityEliminate manual intervention and reduce incident frequencyContribute primarily in Python, with exposure to JVM-based systems as neededReview code with a strong emphasis on operability, resiliency, and maintainabilityAdvocate for “build it so it can be operated” engineering standardsTechnical Leadership & CollaborationProvide technical leadership without formal authority, influencing design and operational decisionsMentor engineers through pairing, reviews, and incident leadershipCollaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Data, and Customer teamsOperate effectively in high-pressure, ambiguous environments, especially during customer-impacting incidentsWhat you bring to the team10+ years of experience in software engineering, SRE, sustaining engineering, or production operationsDeep hands-on experience operating production systems in AWSStrong experi