Vali Health | Founding Product Engineer, Pay

People Culture Talent•San Mateo, CA

About The Position

As the Found Product Engineer, you'll build the AI-native operating system that's transforming home care for thousands of seniors. You'll work directly with their founders to design and ship core features—from multi-agent AI systems to real-time communication infrastructure. This is a rare chance to define technical culture, own meaningful product areas, and see your code directly improve care quality for vulnerable populations—all while positioning yourself for rapid growth into technical leadership. As the owner of our Bookkeeping and Accounting products, you will tackle a mission-critical area: accurate time/mileage capture and proper shift finalization. Customers consistently cite this as one of their biggest operational pain points. They've already built the groundwork, including integration with the incumbent system and automatically collecting missing information from care professionals. They are now expanding this foundation into a robust, scalable system that meets strong customer demand for daily review, high-integrity audit trails, and oversight and configurability across diverse client and payer requirements.

Requirements

Gets Energized by Meaningful Impact
You light up when talking about AI solving real problems—not just cool tech for tech's sake, but technology that genuinely improves people's lives.
You believe the best products emerge from understanding real user pain points, not from theoretical feature lists.
Takes Initiative & Drives Results
You naturally gravitate toward taking ownership—you see something that needs fixing and your instinct is to fix it, not to wait for permission.
You communicate proactively and keep stakeholders informed without being asked.
You ship fast and iterate based on real feedback—you'd rather get something good in users' hands quickly than perfect something in isolation.
Loves Technical Versatility & Learning
You enjoy working across the full stack and aren't fazed by jumping between backend systems, LLM integrations, and user interfaces within the same week.
You thrive in fast-paced environments where you're constantly learning new things and adapting to evolving requirements.
You use AI-native development tools like Cursor and Claude to move faster while maintaining high code quality standards.
Combines Technical Excellence with Business Intuition
You can translate messy real-world scenarios into clean, reliable software workflows—you understand that the perfect technical solution isn't always the right business solution.
You have strong product instincts and can spot when a feature will actually solve user problems versus just add complexity.
You naturally think about edge cases and ask "what happens when..." because you know real-world operations are messier than demos.
Cares Deeply About Getting the Details Right
You hold yourself to a high standard for correctness, especially when your code affects people's paychecks, healthcare billing, or financial reimbursements.
You take pride in building systems that are both reliable and auditable—you understand that "it works" isn't enough when money and compliance are involved.
You enjoy owning data quality end-to-end because you know great products are built on great data foundations.
Operates Like an Owner, Not Just a Contributor
You think beyond your immediate tasks to consider the broader business impact of your technical decisions.
You naturally leave codebases, processes, and team practices better than you found them.
You get satisfaction from building something that will scale and support the team's growth over time.

Nice To Haves

Founding/Early-Stage DNA — You've been employee #1-20 somewhere and know what it feels like to build something from scratch
Product Intuition That Surprises People — You naturally think about user problems first, technical solutions second
LLM/AI Product Experience — You've shipped AI-powered features and understand both the possibilities and the pitfalls
Our Tech Stack — TypeScript, React, Python (but honestly, great engineers can pick these up quickly)

Responsibilities

Build the Financial Brain of Home Care
Design and own the intelligent system that ensures every caregiver gets paid accurately and on time—directly impacting the livelihoods of thousands of healthcare workers.
Create automated decision-making that eliminates manual payroll errors, turning hours of tedious work into seconds of smart automation.
Solve Complex Problems with Real-World Impact
Build exception-handling workflows that gracefully manage the chaos of real-world caregiving—missed clock-ins, schedule changes, and emergency situations—ensuring care never stops and workers are fairly compensated.
Design configurable systems that adapt to different client needs, from small family agencies to large healthcare networks.
Transform Data Into Actionable Intelligence
Create reporting systems that give agency owners unprecedented visibility into their operations—overtime patterns, margin analysis, and billing insights that drive better business decisions.
Build the foundation for advanced features like predictive scheduling, cost optimization, and automated invoicing.
Shape Product Direction & Customer Experience
Own features end-to-end from conception to customer feedback, with direct input on product roadmap and strategy.
Work directly with customers to understand their pain points and see your solutions make an immediate difference in their daily operations.
Help define what an AI-first healthcare platform should look and feel like.
Ground-Floor Opportunity to Scale Your Impact
Join as one of the first engineers and help establish the technical culture and architecture that will support our growth from startup to industry leader.
Work across the full stack—from database design to user interfaces—expanding your technical breadth while deepening your expertise in AI and healthcare.