Location: San Francisco, CA (Hybrid, 3 days/week onsite)
Company Stage of Funding: Seed (~$7M raised)
Office Type: Hybrid
Salary: $250,000 – $350,000 + 0.5–1%+ Equity
Visa: No visa sponsorship available
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.
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
10+ years of engineering experience
Strong backend or full-stack technical depth
Prior experience scaling engineering systems and teams (110 or 10100)
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
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
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
This is a rare opportunity to join a healthcare AI company solving one of medicine’s most important operational bottlenecks.
You’ll lead engineering at a critical inflection point, building both systems and team foundations while remaining deeply technical.
You’ll help accelerate clinical trials, improve medicine delivery timelines, and shape a company positioned to become foundational infrastructure for life sciences operations.
If you're excited by technical leadership, hands-on system building, and scaling engineering excellence inside a mission-driven AI startup, this role offers exceptional upside.