Data Engineer
Remote Istanbul, Istanbul, Türkiye 3+ yrs
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 Data Engineer to join the R&D Engineering team building Derin, our AI-powered interview platform. Derin runs conversational, LLM-led interviews over WhatsApp/SMS, web and voice, and turns thousands of conversations into structured data that our scientists and clients use to ultimately improve patients’ outcomes.
You will own the data layer behind all of this: the pipelines that move interview data from our application into our Databricks lakehouse, the models that make it analysis-ready, and the serving layer (Postgres/Lakebase) that our product reads from in real time. You will work side by side with backend engineers, data scientists and product managers, in a small team where your work reaches clients quickly.
- 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
- Own the Databricks data platform behind Derin, from ingestion of interview and survey data to the analytics-ready tables our product, scientists and clients rely on
- Design and build reliable batch and incremental pipelines on Databricks (Lakeflow Spark Declarative Pipelines, formerly Delta Live Tables; Jobs; Delta Lake) and govern them in Unity Catalog
- Help move our production data layer to Databricks Lakebase (managed Postgres), including synced tables, migration and cutover, and keep the serving layer fast for our APIs
- Model survey and conversation data in Delta Lake so it is easy to access for downstream analytics products
- Make pipelines observable and trustworthy: data-quality checks (such as Lakeflow expectations), tests, Unity Catalog lineage, monitoring and alerting
- Turn scientists' Databricks notebooks and analyses into production-grade, reusable pipelines
- Build privacy and security into how we handle sensitive participant data, using Unity Catalog access controls, row filters and column masks, in a SOC2 and HIPAA-compliant environment
- Use infrastructure as code (Terraform, Databricks Asset Bundles) and CI/CD to deploy data workloads across environments
- Contribute to shaping our engineering culture and data platform as we grow
- You have at least 3 years of experience in data engineering, building production pipelines in Python and SQL
- You have hands-on production experience with Databricks (Spark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Lakeflow or Jobs)
- You are strong with relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL (including Databricks Lakebase): schema design, query optimization, replication or CDC
- You have hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure (required) and with infrastructure as code and CI/CD
- You have modelled data for analytics and BI (dimensional or long/wide formats) and care about data quality and testing
- Experience serving data to LLM-powered features (text-to-SQL, RAG, Databricks metric views, Genie or other semantic layers) is a strong plus
- Experience with survey, research or healthcare data, or with regulated data (HIPAA, GDPR/KVKK), 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 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 only). Surgo is headquartered in Washington, DC, with team members across the US, UK, Türkiye, Brazil and India.
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.