Vice President, Application Development

DrFirst Inc.

2d•$200,000 - $280,000•Remote

About The Position

For 25 years, DrFirst has empowered providers and patients to achieve better health through intelligent medication management. We improve healthcare workflows and help patients start and stay on therapy with end-to-end solutions that enhance prescription access, affordability, and adherence. Our solutions help 100 million patients a year and are used by more than 420,000 prescribers, 71,000 pharmacies, 270 EHRs and health information systems, and over 2,000 hospitals in the U.S. This is a great opportunity to be a part of a successful Healthcare IT company experiencing significant growth. Here you'll get to work with some of the smartest and most interesting people around; solving unique and complex challenges in healthcare on a scale matched by a few companies. If you get excited about stretching yourself in new ways, developing yourself to your fullest potential, care about working with smart colleagues; we want to talk to you! Position Overview Is This You? You love building and scaling intelligent software! Technology still delights you, and the current wave of AI tools has you energized. You're happy to be programming again, experimenting with AI-assisted development, and seeing possibilities everywhere. You want to work somewhere where your beta launch means 10% of the US population and the freedom to move fast. You're looking for a place where you can be both strategic and hands-on. Where you can architect systems that process hundreds of millions of transactions. Where you can lead teams but also build demos that make executives lean forward in their chairs. You thrive when resources are constrained because it forces creative solutions. You'd rather multiply impact through smart architecture and reusable services than throw bodies at problems. You know through personal experience that well-led teams leveraging modern AI tools can compete with organizations 10x their size. If this sounds like you, keep reading. The Profile We Need We distilled this role into nine qualities. Here's what we're looking for: Technical Depth: You've built systems that process transactions at scale everyday. You know the difference between a demo and an ML/LLM that scales. Hands-on Coding: This is a player-coach role. You should spend 20-30% of your time prototyping with LLMs, writing Python, and demonstrating what's possible before your team scales it. Storytelling & Communication: You translate complex technical concepts into narratives that make executives believe. You can demo something impressive while staying grounded and credible. Emotional Intelligence: You read rooms, inspire teams, and navigate organizational dynamics. High EQ matters as much as high IQ here. Team Development: You'll inherit solid engineering teams and will have the opportunities to grow and mature them. Strategic Thinking: You spot opportunities others miss. You understand where AI creates genuine value versus where it's just noise. Network of Talent: This is critical. When headcount is limited and the market moves fast, you multiply impact through reusable services, smart architecture, AI-assisted development, and building a network of talented people who want to work with you. Executive Presence: You're comfortable presenting at healthcare conferences, meeting with pharma partners, and representing our technical vision externally. Healthcare Domain: Nice to have but not required. We'll teach you healthcare if you bring the AI expertise and learning agility.

Requirements

ML/LLM production experience: You've shipped ML systems at scale. You understand prompt engineering, RAG architectures, embedding models, speech to text and text to speech, and model evaluation. Hybrid solutions of local and cloud LLM.
Event-driven architectures: Real-time processing and making decisions in milliseconds is second nature to you.
Cloud infrastructure: Deep AWS experiencerequired, GCP a plus. You know both cloud primitives and managed AI services.
Modern AI tools: You actively use AI-assisted development tools. You understand how they change what small teams can accomplish.
Technical stack: We work with open source, Java, Python, Kafka, Postgres, AWS and GCP. You work within these guardrails.
10+ years in software engineering and data science, with 5+ years leading teams.
Proven track record taking AI/ML products from concept to production with measurable business impact.
Track record hiring, developing, and retaining high-performing technical teams.
Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical topics to non-technical executives.

Nice To Haves

Healthcare Domain: Nice to have but not required. We'll teach you healthcare if you bring the AI expertise and learning agility.

Responsibilities

Build cool stuff used by 100Ks of doctors daily: Create reusable AI services that streamline healthcare, adding agents where they make sense.
Translate weekly advancements in AI: To improve and expand our own medical AI assistant while pioneering the industry next evidence based medical solutions.
Evolve Med History: Architect the next generation of medication history capabilities on top of our every expanding data assets.
Establish AI development practices: Make AI-augmented development the standard, not the exception. Work with your co-leaders to constantly refine how our products are made.
Evangelize internally: Make believers out of skeptics through working demos and tangible results. Sell practical AI transformation to stakeholders.
Lead your team: You'll have full hiring authority with an expanding team of engineers, data scientists, and BI developers.

Benefits

Competitive compensation, with a base salary of $200,000 - $280,000 (Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience)
Eligible for Company Performance-based Bonus Program, based on individual and company performance
Medical, dental, and vision insurance
401K eligible after 3 months of employment, with 50% company match up to first 5% of salary contributed to the plan with a 3-year vesting schedule
HSA for eligible employees enrolled in the HDHP, with a generous company contribution up to $500 for individual coverage and $1000 for family coverage per year
100% company paid short and long-term disability, AD&D, and group life insurance
Accrued annual paid time off (PTO) of 18 days for the first 3 years of service, increasing thereafter and 7 paid holiday days
Employee Assistance Program
Continuing Education funds up to $1500 annually for eligible programs after 1 year of service
Voluntary benefits including FSA, Hospital indemnity, Accident and Critical Illness insurances