My suggestion is to hire a good architect.

The worst thing will be if the house sets too low in the ground as this will make proper grading difficult or impossible, necessitating that band-aids in the form of yard drains are installed. Sometimes, yard drains are impossible to avoid, but if possible try to use surface drainage ... it doesn't clog or hide mysteries under the ground. It is popular to run downspouts into underground pipes but this can backfire in mysterious ways or in the future. I prefer tried and true old school, above grade splash blocks that drain out onto the lawn or landscape plantings, and dissipate into the general runoff. Splash blocks almost always end up being covered by foundation planting so are usually unseen. So called "pop-up" drains are at high risk of clogging at some future point so I'd avoid them like the plague.

Definitely look into getting geotechnical reports of the site and soil, and then I’d poke a local residential architect and their structural engineer of choice about any considerations with a French drain or what may be needed for proper mitigation of soil pressure for any foundations walls or how and how deep to set the footings. This can depend on your climate and soil type especially with frost depth. It’s not something I’d try to DIY, since it is extremely expensive to fix if you don’t get it right.

Keep the main home level at highest elevation. Then use design elements such as a walk out basement, post and beam construction, and cantelivered patios to make sense of the elevations change. Place an advertisment for clean fill dirt wanted online or make a sign to place near construction sites, and get at least some of the fill dirt for free. Consider an elevator in the original construction cost. I have the same conditions, 5-8 ft drop, hard rocky ground.

If basements are common in your area, then a design with a walk-out basement in back is an option.

If basements are not common, there are a number of other strategies, including:

--Regrading;

--Having the back of the house out of the ground with a skirt to cover the area between grade and finish floor;

--A house plan which steps down, following the natural grade, which minimizes grading.

There's probably some other options as well.