Founding Lead Engineer

We are partnering with an early-stage healthtech startup building an AI operating system for care navigation. The platform empowers trained advocates to help Medicare patients navigate diagnoses, bills, and care plans—combining high-touch human support with AI-driven workflows.

The company is well-capitalized following a large seed round, has strong early traction (millions in run-rate), and plans to raise a Series A in the next 6–12 months. You will be the hands-on technical owner of the next-gen (“V2”) platform—architecting, building, and shipping core product while standards and systems are being set.

The Mission

Make healthcare human again by giving every Medicare patient a dedicated advocate, supercharged by AI, to coordinate care, fight insurance battles, and improve outcomes.

• Ship the Core Platform: Design and launch advocate- and patient-facing applications, backend services, and third-party integrations.
  

• AI-First Workflows: Build agentic/LLM features for intake, triage, summarization, proactive nudges, and RCM/billing automation.
  

• Architecture & Roadmap: Translate ambiguous product needs into scalable, secure, HIPAA-compliant systems; decide build vs. buy.
  

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work directly with clinical, operations, and growth to solve real user pain points; join select customer calls.
  

• Engineering Standards: Establish patterns for quality, security, observability, and compliance that others will follow.
  

Requirements

• 5–15 years of professional software experience, backend-leaning full-stack.
  
• Python and Django in production (current stack is Python/Django Next.js; you don’t need every tool listed).
  
• VC-backed startup experience (Pre-seed to Series D) where you have shipped meaningful product.
  
• Healthcare/telehealth startup experience and comfort working in regulated environments (HIPAA, security).
  
• Strong fundamentals in APIs, relational databases, and cloud (AWS or GCP); bias to ship quickly with intention around tech debt.
  
• Ability to be in San Francisco 3x/month for 3–4 days (non-negotiable).
  

Nice-to-haves

• RCM/billing, EHR, claims, or care-coordination integrations.
  
• Experience with LLMs and agentic systems (OpenAI, Gemini, vector DBs, RAG pipelines).
  
• Aptible or other compliance-oriented PaaS; CI/CD for small teams; Next.js exposure.
  
• STEM degree (CS, Biomedical, Math) or equivalent practical depth.
  
  

• Clear progression and ownership in high-growth environments; meaningful shipped systems.
  
• Evidence of craft and curiosity (clean repos/PRs, side projects that shipped, measurable impact).
  

Benefits

• Build at the intersection of AI × healthcare where your work directly impacts patient outcomes.
  
• Extreme ownership from architecture through deployment; high velocity, hands-on culture.
  
• Work alongside seasoned technical leaders (former CTOs/advisors from leading tech and health companies).
  
• Competitive salary with meaningful founding-level equity.