We are seeking an accomplished Senior Software Engineer to design, implement, and operate mission-critical stateful services that form the backbone of real-time, automated decisioning and personalization platforms. These systems are responsible for maintaining authoritative state, orchestrating lifecycle transitions, and ensuring reliable downstream effects—often in high-concurrency, low-latency environments.
This position is ideal for engineers with a strong grasp of state machines, idempotency, distributed systems, and “exactly-once” execution semantics. You will also employ advanced AI-assisted and agentic engineering tools to drive correctness, velocity, resilience, and scalability.
Key Responsibilities
State Machine Architecture & Implementation
Design, build, and maintain explicit state machines governing:
Lifecycle transitions (e.g., open → in progress → completed → suppressed)
Validation of permissible transitions
Time-based and event-driven changes
Ensure state machines are:
Clearly modeled and not hidden in code logic
Deterministic, reproducible, and auditable
Easily understood and testable
Robust against illegal or duplicate transitions through comprehensive validation
Transactional State Memory & Exactly-Once Processing
Architect and manage transactional state stores serving as the single source of truth
Support safe, high-concurrency read/write operations
Uphold system invariants across partial failures and recovery scenarios
Implement robust idempotency controls so:
Requests can be safely retried
Commands execute at most once
Duplicate events do not compromise state integrity
Develop APIs and workflows resilient to retries, restarts, and replay events
Reliable Side Effects via Outbox Pattern
Employ the outbox pattern to guarantee atomicity of state updates and event publication
Prevent loss or duplication of side effects
Maintain clear separation between state mutation and downstream event delivery
Facilitate replay, backfill, and recovery operations without breaching state guarantees
Integrate seamlessly with messaging and streaming platforms, ensuring fault tolerance
Distributed Systems & Concurrency Management
Design for correctness under concurrent updates, network partitions, partial failures, and service redeployments
Apply expertise in:
Idempotency keys
Optimistic and pessimistic locking strategies
Event ordering and causality
Balance rigorous correctness with performance and latency requirements
AI-Assisted & Agentic Engineering Practices
Leverage AI-powered and agentic tools to:
Automatically generate and validate state transition tests
Probe edge cases and concurrency challenges
Assist in code reviews, refactoring, and documentation
Accelerate debugging, incident analysis, and root cause discovery
Use AI responsibly to enhance productivity while maintaining clarity and system integrity
Observability, Auditability & Trust
Engineer services with robust observability through:
Structured logging, metrics, and alerting
Distributed tracing
Ensure all state transitions and emitted events are:
Fully traceable and reproducible
Auditable for compliance and investigative needs
Collaboration & Technical Leadership
Partner with platform, data, and quality engineering teams to assure end-to-end reliability
Participate in architecture and design reviews to elevate system quality standards
Mentor and guide engineers on best practices for safe, reliable, and maintainable distributed systems
Required Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field
6+ years of experience in backend or platform engineering
Demonstrated hands-on expertise with:
State machine modeling and lifecycle management
Transactional state stores
Idempotent API and workflow design
In-depth understanding of:
Exactly-once or effectively once processing
Failure modes in distributed environments
Proficiency in one or more contemporary languages (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Go, Python)
Experience with AI-assisted development tools for productivity and code quality
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with outbox, transactional messaging, or event sourcing patterns
Familiarity with low-latency, high-throughput architectures
Operational experience in systems requiring strict auditability and correctness
Background in regulated or mission-critical domains
Success Indicators
State transitions are precise, deterministic, and resilient to retries
Side effects reliably occur exactly once, even during failures or replays
Systems recover gracefully from crashes and redeployments
AI-driven tooling decreases defect rates and expedites debugging
The state layer is trusted as the definitive source of truth across engineering teams
Why This Role is Critical
In contemporary automated platforms, correctness and reliability hinge on the integrity of state, not just requests. This role ensures that every state transition and side effect is executed once—and only once—providing a solid foundation for trust, reliability, compliance, and scalability throughout the system.
Qualified candidates are required to currently live in, or be willing to move to, a commutable distance for a hybrid (~3 days in-office) work arrangement
Location options are currently:
Washington, D.C. metropolitan area
Louisville, KY metropolitan area
Denver, CO metropolitan area
Dallas, TX metropolitan area
Ft. Lauderdale, FL metropolitan area
Work Style: Remote/Hybrid.
Occasional travel to Humana's offices for training or meetings may be required.
Work Hours Typical business hours are Monday-Friday, 8 hours/day, 5 days/week-- some flexibility might be possible, depending on business needs.
Very minimal travel might be required for training, meetings, and/or conferences
Interview Format
As part of our hiring process, we will be using on-demand technology provided by Hire Vue, a third-party vendor. This technology provides our team of recruiters and hiring managers with an enhanced method for decision-making through on-demand candidate assessments.
If you are selected to move forward from your application prescreen, you will receive correspondence inviting you to participate in an on-demand assessment with pre-determined questions. You should anticipate the assessment to take approximately 10-15 minutes.
Your on-demand assessment will be reviewed, and you will subsequently be informed if you will be moving forward to next round of interviews.
SSN Task via Workday
Should you be extended a formal employment offer you will receive a request to enter your SSN into our Workday system to scan for duplicate profiles.
Work at Home Requirements: To ensure Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees’ ability to work effectively, the self-provided internet service of Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees must meet the following criteria: At minimum, a download speed of 25 Mbps and an upload speed of 10 Mbps is required; wireless, wired cable or DSL connection is suggested. In certain roles, the minimum recommended internet speed required by Humana may not be sufficient for business needs. Humana reserves the right to require associates to upgrade their internet service if necessary. Work from a dedicated space lacking ongoing interruptions to protect member PHI / HIPAA information.Travel: While this is a remote position, occasional travel to Humana's offices for training or meetings may be required.
Scheduled Weekly Hours
40
Pay Range
The compensation range below reflects a good faith estimate of starting base pay for full time (40 hours per week) employment at the time of posting. The pay range may be higher or lower based on geographic location and individual pay will vary based on demonstrated job related skills, knowledge, experience, education, certifications, etc.$106,900 - $147,000 per yearThis job is eligible for a bonus incentive plan. This incentive opportunity is based upon company and/or individual performance.
of Benefits
Humana, Inc. and its affiliated subsidiaries (collectively, “Humana”) offers competitive benefits that support whole-person well-being. Associate benefits are designed to encourage personal wellness and smart healthcare decisions for you and your family while also knowing your life extends outside of work. Among our benefits, Humana provides medical, dental and vision benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan, time off (including paid time off, company and personal holidays, paid parental and caregiver leave), short-term and long-term disability, life insurance and many other opportunities.Application Deadline: 08-30-2026
About Humana: Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) is a leading U.S. healthcare company. Through our Humana insurance services and our CenterWell healthcare services, we make it easier for the millions of people we serve to achieve their best health – delivering the care and service they need, when they need it. These efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare and Medicaid, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large. Learn more about what we offer at Humana.com and at CenterWell.com.
Equal Opportunity Employer
It is the policy of Humana not to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability or protected veteran status. It is also the policy of Humana to take affirmative action, in compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and VEVRAA, to employ and to advance in employment individuals with disability or protected veteran status, and to base all employment decisions only on valid job requirements. This policy shall apply to all employment actions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, upgrading, promotion, transfer, demotion, layoff, recall, termination, rates of pay or other forms of compensation and selection for training, including apprenticeship, at all levels of employment.
Humana will never ask, nor require a candidate to provide money for work equipment and network access during the application process. If you become aware of any instances where you as a candidate are asked to provide information and do not believe it is a legitimate request from Humana or affiliate, please contact yourcareer@humana.com to validate the request
At Humana, our cultural foundation is aligned to helping members achieve their best health by delivering personalized, simplified, whole-person healthcare experiences. Recognizing healthcare needs continue to evolve for each person, for each family and for each community, Humana continuously creates innovative solutions and resources that help people live their healthiest lives on their terms –when and where they need it. Our employees are at the heart of making this happen and that’s why we are dedicated to building an organization of dynamic talent whose experience and passion center on putting the customer first.
