Tech Lead

Parakeet Health•San Francisco, CA

7d•$250,000 - $300,000•Onsite

About The Position

We are seeking a player-coach to join our engineering team. This role involves contributing to core technical decisions, driving ML experimentation, and mentoring engineers. The primary focus is on leading two engineering pods (Platform and FDE), providing technical and career mentorship, and investing in people as the team grows. Initially, the role will be 70% individual contributor (IC) work and 30% technical leadership, with a goal to invert this distribution to 70% leadership and 30% IC work over time. This position is ideal for someone looking to move into engineering management within the next 12-18 months.

Requirements

8+ years of engineering experience.
At least 1 year in a leadership role (EM, TL, Head of Eng, CTO, or equivalent).
Backend-leaning full stack expertise.
Strong proficiency in Python.
Hands-on experience in infrastructure and scaling.
A CS or STEM degree, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience in a compliance-heavy or regulated industry is a plus.
Genuine belief that agentic tools are the future of software development.
Ability to question the status quo and see better ways.
Ability to empower others to be better.
Ability to treat LLMs as force multipliers and work that way.
Taste: ability to distinguish technically correct code from a genuinely good patient experience.
Ability to notice and fix subtle issues.
Understanding that building software is both a science and an art.
Focus on shipping products that reach real people.
Honesty about what you don't know.
Willingness to admit when you are wrong.
Willingness to do unglamorous work without complaint.
Ability to adapt to a fast-paced environment.
Agility and ability to adapt to changing roadmaps.

Nice To Haves

Experience in healthcare industry.
Experience with audio streaming services at scale.
Experience with building evaluation systems for AI.
Experience with building context-rich systems for AI.
Experience with implementing safety guardrails for AI systems.

Responsibilities

Make key technical decisions.
Ship platform and customer code.
Drive ML experimentation.
Lead the Platform and FDE engineering pods.
Provide technical and career mentorship to engineers.
Invest in the growth and development of the engineering team.
Be a guiding voice in team meetings, sprint planning, and roadmap planning.
Conduct 1:1 meetings with team members.
Own and improve voice and conversation design at scale.
Own and build the infrastructure for autonomous bug fixing and reliable production systems.
Develop evaluation systems to differentiate between good and bad fixes.
Ensure rich context for agents to understand their work.
Implement guardrails for safe failure.
Ensure the trustworthiness of systems designed by humans.