Head of Engineering
About The Position
Our client is an early-stage healthcare AI startup building intelligent automation systems for clinical trial operations. The company is addressing one of the largest bottlenecks in medicine: clinical trial execution. Their platform uses AI agents to automate complex site-level workflows, helping clinical research organizations accelerate trial activation, improve operational efficiency, and ultimately speed up medicine delivery. Backed by top-tier investors including SignalFire and Define Ventures, the company has raised $7M and already has strong market traction, with over 200 clinical research sites actively using the platform. The founding team combines deep healthcare domain expertise with strong technical execution, and the company is entering a critical growth phase where operational excellence and engineering leadership are essential. With a lean engineering team of 4–5 engineers, this is a rare opportunity to join as the senior technical leader, directly shape engineering culture, scale systems, and help define the technical foundation through Series A and beyond.
Requirements
- 10+ years of engineering experience
- Strong backend or full-stack technical depth
- Prior experience scaling engineering systems and teams (1→10 or 10→100)
- Combination of startup execution and larger-scale systems experience
- Strong people leadership and mentorship capabilities
- Hands-on coding ability (player-coach mindset)
- Experience building operationally reliable production systems
- Strong communication across technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Comfortable operating in fast-moving early-stage environments
- Willing to work hybrid onsite in San Francisco
Nice To Haves
- Experience at top VC-backed startups
- Experience scaling through Series A / Series B
- TypeScript / Next.js familiarity
- Experience with: AI agents
- RAG pipelines
- Evaluation systems
- Monitoring / alerting infrastructure
- Healthcare / healthtech / clinical systems experience
- Strong product intuition
- Experience managing engineering teams while remaining hands-on
- Educational background from strong technical programs
Responsibilities
- Lead day-to-day engineering execution and sprint management
- Build, mentor, and grow a high-performing engineering team
- Remain hands-on with production code, PR reviews, and debugging
- Own technical direction across full-stack systems
- Drive architecture decisions for agentic AI systems and RAG pipelines
- Establish strong engineering processes and operational rigor
- Build scalable internal tooling, monitoring, and quality systems
- Partner directly with the CEO on roadmap and technical strategy
- Improve shipping velocity without sacrificing product quality
- Lead hiring and set the technical bar for future engineering hires
- Develop engineering culture focused on ownership and excellence
- Help scale systems from early traction toward larger enterprise deployment
Benefits
- Base salary: $250,000 – $350,000
- Equity: 0.5–1%+ depending on candidate strength
- Hybrid SF-based role
- Direct partnership with founders
- High ownership and leadership visibility
- Opportunity to shape engineering org from the ground up
- Clear path toward VP Engineering / CTO-level scope
- Mission-driven healthcare impact
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
