Locations: Charlotte, NC
Duration: Contract
Job Description: 
We are seeking a GCP FHIR API Staff Data Engineer to design, develop, maintain, and support custom-built HL7 FHIR APIs on Google Cloud Platform. This role will focus on reading large-scale clinical data from Google Cloud Bigtable, transforming it into FHIR-compliant resources, and exposing it through high-performance, secure REST APIs for downstream consumers. This role requires working closely with data teams, frequently in a matrixed environment as part of a broader project team.
This is a hands-on engineering role requiring deep experience in custom API development, healthcare data standards, and GCP-native services, with responsibility across the full API lifecycle—from design through production support. This role requires ‘self-starters’ who are proficient in API problem solving and capable of bringing clarity to complex situations.
Due to the emerging and fast-evolving nature of GCP technology and practice, the position requires that one stay well-informed of technological advancements and be proficient at putting new innovations into effective practice. As a Staff Data Engineer, you will collaborate closely with all team members to create a modular, scalable solution that addresses current needs, but will also serve as a foundation for future success.
Responsibilities:
This role will provide API development for specific business environments.
• Adheres to and supports data engineering API best practices, processes, and standards.
• Produce high quality, modular, reusable code that incorporates best practices and serves as an example for less experienced engineers.
• Build productive and healthy relationships within the department and other teams to foster growth of our culture, our people, and our platforms.
• Works in an environment with rapidly changing business requirements and priorities
• Shares knowledge and experience to contribute to growth of overall team capabilities.
• Actively participate in technical group discussions and adopt any modern technologies to improve the development and operations.
• Self-directed, hands-on engineer
• Comfortable working in regulated healthcare environments
• Strong communicator with both technical and business stakeholders
Architecture & Design
• Design custom FHIR API solutions on GCP.
• Define scalable data access patterns for Cloud Bigtable API workloads.
• Design FHIR resource mappings, profiles, and response structures.
• Partner with platform, security, and data teams to align with enterprise standards.
API & Application Development
• Build custom RESTful FHIR APIs
• Implement resource-level endpoints (e.g., Patient, Encounter, Observation)
• Develop business logic for filtering, pagination, search parameters, and versioning.
• Deploy APIs using Cloud Run, GKE, or App Engine
• Implement caching and performance optimization strategies.
Data Engineering
• Read and optimize data retrieval from Google Cloud Bigtable
• Transform source data into FHIR-compliant JSON responses.
• Handle large volumes of clinical data with low latency.
• Implement validation and error handling for FHIR payloads.
Security & Compliance
• Implement OAuth 2.0, IAM, and service-to-service authentication.
• Ensure secure handling of PHI and HIPAA-regulated data.
• Implement audit logging, encryption in transit and at rest.
• Enforce API throttling, quotas, and access controls.
DevOps, Maintenance & Support
• Support CI/CD pipelines for API deployment and releases.
• Monitor APIs using Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging
• Troubleshoot production issues and perform root-cause analysis.
• Optimize cost, performance, and reliability of API services.
Required Skills & Experience:
• 5+ years of hands-on experience in API development or data engineering
• Strong experience building custom HL7 FHIR APIs
• Proven experience working with Google Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud Functions
• Strong understanding of FHIR resources and search semantics
• Proficiency in Java, Python, or Scala
• Experience with RESTful API design, pagination, filtering, and versioning
• Experience with OAuth 2.0, API gateways, and IAM
• Strong debugging and production support experience
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related discipline.
Preferred / Nice-to-have:
• Experience in healthcare, payer, or provider environments
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes (GKE)
• Experience defining custom FHIR profiles and extensions.
• Prior experience supporting high-volume, consumer-facing APIs.
• Hands-on experience with GCP platform and experience with many of the following components:
o Spark Streaming, Kafka, Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Dataflow
o Cloud Composer, DataProc, GitHub, CI/CD, Cloud Logging
o RDBMS – MS SQL Server/Oracle/Teradata/Oracle
o NoSQL, HBase, Cassandra, MongoDB, In-memory, Columnar, other emerging technologies
• GCP Cloud Professional Data Engineer
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API

Onsite Contract Position for GCP FHIR API Data Engineer (14+ Years) in Charlotte, NC
