Founding Engineer, Senior/Staff Software Engineer

Harbor Health•Austin, TX

About The Position

At Harbor Health, we’re transforming healthcare in Texas through collaboration and innovation. We’re seeking passionate individuals to help us create a member-centered experience that connects comprehensive care with a modern payment model. If you’re ready to make a meaningful impact in a dynamic environment where your contributions are valued, please bring your talents to our team! The Mission At Harbor Health, we are on a mission to build the future of healthcare, and I’m so happy you’re looking at potentially joining us. We are building the infrastructure for a high-growth benefits company that truly puts members first. Our philosophy is simple and close to our hearts: we provide our members with health, not just clinic or insurance . You will be helping us build systems that cater for overall consumer health, power clinical outcomes, and the financial foundation of a next-generation "payvider”, with the mandate to build a unicorn. The Culture (How We Operate) At Harbor Health, our engineering culture is built on technical depth, relentless execution, and profound empathy. We are a deeply collaborative, engineering-led organization where the best idea wins, regardless of title. Data Over Dogma: We love to ask, "How do we know that?" We don't make decisions based on the loudest voice in the room or institutional momentum; we act on objectively verifiable data. High Velocity, Low Ego: We are building a psychologically safe, supportive environment where rigorous debate is expected and welcomed, but brilliant jerks are not tolerated. We want engineers who are a force of nature, but who measure their success by how much they elevate, mentor, and unblock the rest of the pod. Total Context, Constructive Collaboration:We believe in a “one-team” mindset between technology & business functions. Leadership will work with you to foster transparent, respectful, and direct collaboration with our stakeholders. We ensure you have the raw business context and strategic alignment necessary to architect the right solutions and take full, proud ownership of the outcomes.

Requirements

The Crucible Experience: You have been at the tiller during the 0-to-1 or 1-to-scale phase of a high-growth startup or successful exit. You know what it feels like when the architecture buckles under scale, and you have the battle scars (and the triumphs!) of rewriting the engine mid-flight.
Uncompromising Technical Depth: We want to geek out with you over the physics of the system! We believe that AI augments expertise rather than replaces it, and we need you to have lots.
AI-Augmented Engineering: You have force-multiplied yourself and your teams using advanced AI coding tools (Claude, Copilot, Codex). We are looking for true proficiency in agentic workflows, using AI to aggressively scale code generation, architectural boilerplate, and test coverage.
Polyglot & Full-Stack Capable: Our core stack spans Python, Typescript, Go, and Java. We’re in the AWS ecosystem. While your absolute mastery will be in backend distributed systems and deep infrastructure, you aren't afraid to traverse the entire stack to unblock a feature and help the team out.
Database Mastery: Deep, pragmatic experience with both relational (PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases. You know exactly when to denormalize for read-performance and when to enforce strict relational integrity to avoid write throttling.
Grit & Persistence: You genuinely enjoy solving the "how do we even connect this?" problems. You have the tenacity to take a high-level vision and pull it into reality.

Responsibilities

Architect the Foundation: Define and drive the technical vision for our systems, including cloud infrastructure, backend architecture, and dip into full-stack development. You will partner with as well as pioneer secure systems designed for the compliance-heavy healthcare ecosystem.
Build the Bridges: We need you to design the fault-tolerant distributed systems that connect the disparate parts of the healthcare ecosystem (TPAs, clearinghouses, Healthcare.gov). More importantly, you will build bridges internally. You will serve as a fierce advocate for our benefits operations team - listening to their pain points, partnering with them on solutions, and bringing them directly into the system design process so we can leverage their incredible domain expertise.
Lead from the Trenches: This is a highly hands-on role. You will be writing code, designing core schemas, and proving out the most difficult technical concepts before passing the baton to the team.
Force Multiply: Mentor a wonderful pod of dedicated engineers. You will set the gold standard for system design, CI/CD, and code quality. The true measure of your success will be building systems so well-documented and clean that the team can operate them flawlessly.