Role: Founding Engineer / Technical Co-Founder
Location: San Francisco, CA (In-Person, 5 Days/Week)
Our client is a venture-backed healthcare technology company focused on building a new paradigm for patients with chronic conditions. The company is tackling a massive and underserved problem space, where millions of individuals are left without clear treatment pathways and are forced to navigate fragmented, anecdotal information on their own.
Backed by top-tier investors and founded in late 2025, the company raised a multi-million dollar seed round in an accelerated timeframe, signaling strong conviction in both the founding team and the opportunity. Despite being pre-product, there is already meaningful organic demand and early community formation around the mission.
The platform sits at the intersection of AI, consumer health, and community-driven data — combining structured health tracking, intelligent reasoning systems, and patient-to-patient insights. The goal is to build a system that learns from real-world outcomes and helps users identify effective treatment pathways through structured experimentation and personalized recommendations.
This is a true zero-to-one environment with a founding team of just a few individuals. The company is building both the product and the underlying technical foundation from scratch, with significant go-to-market investment planned in the near term.
Position Overview:
This is a founding technical role with full ownership over architecture, product development, and engineering direction. The individual will work directly with the Founder/CEO as a thought partner, shaping not just how the product is built, but what should be built.
The role goes beyond execution — this person is expected to operate as a technical leader, bringing strong opinions, challenging assumptions, and helping define the long-term technical vision of the company.
There is a clear path toward Technical Co-Founder for the right individual, including meaningful equity and shared decision-making responsibility.
Key Responsibilities
- Architect and build the initial product from the ground up, including core systems, data models, and user-facing experiences
- Develop an intelligent system that captures both structured and unstructured health data across multiple inputs (e.g., symptoms, labs, wearables, user-reported experiences)
- Design and implement AI-driven recommendation and matching systems based on user data, outcomes, and patterns
- Build scalable data pipelines to ingest, normalize, and utilize health-related data across sources
- Establish engineering standards, tooling, and culture in a zero-to-one environment
- Collaborate closely with the Founder across product, design, and go-to-market strategy
- Lead hiring and development of the engineering team as the company scales
- Ensure the product is ready for a planned go-to-market push in the near term
Qualifications
You might be a fit if you:
- Are a full-stack engineer with a backend-leaning skillset and strong system design capabilities
- Have experience building and shipping products in early-stage (pre-Series B) startup environments
- Operate at a senior or staff level with the ability to independently own technical decisions and outcomes
- Are deeply AI-native — actively working with modern models, tooling, and agent-based workflows
- Are proficient in modern languages and frameworks (e.g., Python, JavaScript/TypeScript)
- Have experience or interest in consumer-facing products, ideally in health, wellness, or data-driven environments
- Have experience hiring or leading engineers, or are ready to step into that responsibility
- Thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and are comfortable building without a defined playbook
- Are motivated by mission-driven work, particularly in improving outcomes for individuals navigating complex health challenges
This role may not be a fit if you:
- Prefer structured environments with clearly defined requirements and timelines
- Are looking for a standard 9-to-5 work schedule with strict boundaries
- Are not actively experimenting with or leveraging AI tools in your day-to-day workflow
- Have not built or shipped consumer-facing products end-to-end
- Are primarily motivated by compensation over ownership and mission
- Prefer stability over the intensity and ambiguity of a true founding-stage company
What they Offer:
- Competitive base salary with flexibility based on experience and cash vs. equity preferences
- Significant founding equity, with the potential for co-founder-level ownership
- Fully in-office, high-collaboration environment in San Francisco
- Health benefits and daily in-office meals
- Opportunity to define the technical foundation, culture, and long-term direction of the company
- Direct partnership with an experienced, product-oriented founder
- Early ownership in a category-defining company with strong initial investor backing