Director of Engineering

HeartFlow; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/dental/vision

401k with match

Paid sick time

Parental leave

Free snacks

Fitness events

Job summary

HeartFlow is seeking a Principal Architect to own the technical strategy for platform performance and international expansion. You will define how the clinical platform scales, improve latency and throughput, and architect for multi-region operation with data residency and regulatory considerations.

This hands-on leadership role combines architecture ownership with people management, leading an offshore team in Eastern Europe, guiding design reviews, and mentoring engineers while ensuring

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent experience.
• Deep systems expertise across cloud-native architectures and distributed systems.
• Experience with multi-region deployment, data residency, and regulatory considerations.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end performance strategy for the platform, including latency, throughput, and scalability targets.
• Lead offshore engineering team in Eastern Europe and mentor engineers across time zones.
• Represent platform architecture in cross-functional leadership forums and align with executive stakeholders.
• Ensure compliance with FDA, HIPAA, and international data protection standards for medical software.
• Define and enforce architecture patterns, engineering practices, and observability standards.

Skills

architecture ownership

leadership

AWS

Python

Java

containerization

CI/CD

Terraform

CloudFormation

OpenTelemetry

Datadog

multi-region

mentoring

Regulatory compliance

data residency

offshore leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Job description

• We are seeking a Principal Architect to own the technical strategy for platform performance and international expansion
• In this role, you will define how the Heartflow clinical platform scales, making it faster and more efficient at growing case volume, and architecting it to operate across new geographies with the data residency, regulatory, and localization requirements each market demands
• This is a hands‑on technical leadership role that pairs architecture ownership with direct people management
• You will lead a dedicated offshore engineering team based in Eastern Europe, setting the architectural direction and then building and leading the team that executes against it
• Success requires deep systems expertise alongside the leadership skills to grow a distributed, cross-border engineering group
• Performance Architecture: Own the end‑to‑end performance strategy for the clinical platform — define latency, throughput, and scalability targets; establish benchmarking and profiling practices; and drive architectural changes that measurably improve case processing time and cost per case
• International Architecture: Architect the platform for multi‑region operation, including regional cloud deployment topology, data residency and sovereignty controls, failover and availability design, and the abstractions that let a single codebase serve multiple markets
• Regulatory & Data Residency: Partner with Regulatory, Quality, Security, and Legal to translate GDPR, in‑country data residency mandates, and market‑specific clearance requirements (EU, UK, Japan, and new markets) into concrete architectural requirements and controls
• Localization & Regional Fit: Define the architecture for internationalization — language and locale support, units and clinical reporting conventions, and regional integration differences across EHR, PACS, and imaging workflows
• Offshore Team Leadership: Directly manage and grow a dedicated offshore engineering team in Eastern Europe, owning work allocation, technical quality, delivery accountability, onboarding, and individual development across time zones
• Distributed Delivery Model: Establish the operating model for effective onshore/offshore collaboration — documentation standards, design review practices, handoff protocols, and communication rhythms that make a cross‑border team productive
• Cross‑Team Standards: Define, enforce, and evolve architecture patterns, engineering best practices, and tooling standards for performance and multi‑region concerns that scale across all engineering teams
• Observability: Establish the instrumentation, telemetry, and SLO framework needed to understand and defend platform performance in every region we operate in
• Risk Management: Identify performance, scalability, and expansion‑related technology risks and dependencies early, and establish mitigation plans with clear owners and timelines
• Technical Multiplier: Mentor senior and staff engineers across onshore and offshore teams; raise the architectural bar organization‑wide through design reviews, written guidance, and hands‑on partnership
• Executive Communication: Represent platform architecture in cross‑functional leadership forums; communicate technical strategy, trade‑offs, and expansion readiness clearly to executive and non‑technical stakeholders across Product, Strategy, Operations, Commercial, and Regulatory
• Compliance: Ensure all engineering practices across your scope adhere to FDA regulations, HIPAA, and applicable international data protection standards for medical software

Benefits

• Medical / Dental / Vision (90% of premium paid by Heartflow)
• Flexible Spending and Health Savings Accounts
• 401k plan with employer match
• Company holidays
• Paid sick time and vacation
• Parental leave
• EAP Program
• Free snacks and drinks
• Fitness competition, Blood drive, Waffle Wednesdays and more!

Performance Engineering: Demonstrated track record of diagnosing and resolving performance and scalability problems in large distributed systems — profiling, capacity modeling, load testing, database and query optimization, and cost/performance trade‑off analysisMethodologies: Experience with Agile development methodologies and project management toolsTechnical Proficiency: Deep expertise across system design, cloud‑native architectures, and distributed systems; strong familiarity with backend technologies (e.g., Python, Java), database technologies (SQL and NoSQL), containerization/orchestration, and cloud platforms (AWS)Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent experienceSecurity Knowledge: Strong understanding of web and OWASP security best practicesDevOps: Experience with DevOps best practices (e.g., CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure‑as‑code)International / Multi‑Region: Hands‑on experience architecting systems for multi‑region deployment, including data residency and sovereignty constraints, regional failover, and internationalization/localizationPeople Leadership: Direct management experience, including managing engineers across time zones; experience leading offshore, outsourced, or contractor teams is requiredCollaboration: Demonstrated ability to work in a fast‑paced, collaborative environment and to build trust across geographies and culturesExperience: 15+ years of relevant industry experience, including significant time in principal, staff, or architect‑level roles with cross‑team architectural responsibilityLeadership Skills: Proven experience setting technical vision and architectural standards; track record of mentoring senior and staff engineers and influencing engineering culture organization‑wideData Protection: Working knowledge of GDPR and comparable international data protection and residency regimesRegulatory Understanding: Experience with or demonstrable understanding of FDA regulations and compliance requirements for medical softwareProject Experience: Demonstrated experience designing and delivering large‑scale, secure distributed systems and platform architectures with measurable cross‑team impactExperience launching a healthcare or medical device product into a new international market, including the data residency and regulatory architecture work involvedDeep hands‑on experience with AWS multi‑region infrastructure and infrastructure‑as‑code tooling (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation)Experience owning performance SLOs and observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, OpenTelemetry) at scaleExperience with medical imaging pipelines, DICOM, or compute‑intensive clinical workloadsExperience managing engineering teams in Eastern Europe, or working within a GlobalLogic or similar systems‑integrator partnership modelExperience as a technical leader in medical device software or other FDA/HIPAA‑regulated environmentsFluency or working proficiency in a second language