Director of Engineering

Pennant Services; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Pennant Services is seeking an experienced, hands-on Director of Engineering to lead the Application Development team building products for our post-acute healthcare. Reporting to the Senior VP of Digital, you will define architecture, delivery, and AI-native practices, mentor a small team, and partner with Product, Data, IT, and Operations to move quickly, securely, and reliably in a healthcare setting.

You will champion AI coding agents, ensure HIPAA-grade engineering, observability, cost

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with people management.
• Experience leading AI-assisted development in startup or growth-stage company.
• Experience shipping production software with AI coding agents.
• Designed and operated cloud-hosted multi-service systems with third-party integrations.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction of all digital products and platform roadmap.
• Lead architecture and delivery systems; manage people and AI-native practice.
• Set HIPAA-grade engineering standards and secure data handling.
• Ensure observability, on-call, incident response, and cost management.
• Recruit, hire, mentor engineers and define career paths.
• Represent Application Development with clinical, operations, finance and IT leaders.

Skills

Software engineering leadership

People management

AI-assisted development

AI coding agents

Cloud architectures

CI/CD & automated testing

Tools

Claude Code

Cursor

Codex

Job description

WHO WE ARE

At Pennant, our culture is our competitive advantage. We support a growing network of independently operated healthcare companies while empowering local leaders to make a meaningful impact in the communities they serve. And we are proud to be affiliated with the Pennant Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: PNTG).

Our unique Service Center model provides resources and expertise across areas such as IT, HR, clinical, legal, and compliance, while giving our leaders freedom within a framework to make decisions, take ownership, and lead their teams.

Our culture is grounded in our CAPLICO values: Celebration, Accountability, Passion for Learning, Love One Another, Intelligent Risk Taking, Customer Second, and Ownership. These aren't just words on a wall. They shape how we work, grow leaders, solve problems, and support one another.

If you're looking for a place where your ideas matter, you're encouraged to take ownership, and you can grow alongside passionate people, Pennant may be the place for you. You can learn more about The Pennant Group at www.pennantgroup.com

JOB SUMMARY

Pennant Services is seeking an experienced, hands-on Director of Engineering to lead the Application Development team that builds products for our post-acute businesses (home health, hospice, home care, and senior living).

Reporting to the Senior Vice President of Digital, the Director of Engineering leads how software is built at Pennant: the architecture, delivery system, people, and AI-native engineering practice that lets a small team deliver like a large one. The team already uses AI coding agents extensively and integrates with HCHB, Snowflake, Twilio, and Microsoft Entra ID; and many others. The ideal candidate has led a development team through the AI shift at a startup or growth-stage company, has architecture judgment they can defend, and understands the importance of speed, reliability, security, and responsiveness in a healthcare setting.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

Architecture & Platform

• Own the technical direction of all digital products: service boundaries, data model, integration patterns, and the platform roadmap
• Support build / buy / defer decisions and document them with the technical tradeoffs and reversal cost
• Set and enforce standards for HIPAA-grade engineering: PHI handling, audit logging, least-privilege access, and environment promotion from sandbox through production
• Keep the platform operable: observability, on-call, incident response, and cost management

AI-Native Engineering Practice

• Make AI coding agents the default for design, implementation, testing, and review; remove the barriers that keep engineers from using them well
• Build the harnesses that make agent output trustworthy: evaluation suites, automated test generation, CI gates, and review standards
• Measure delivery (cycle time, change failure rate, defects reaching the field, cost per release) and report where AI helps and where it hurts
• Partner with the Data Science team on how predictive models and LLM features ship into clinical workflows safely

Team Leadership & Delivery

• Lead, mentor, and develop the development team: weekly 1:1s, clear expectations, performance reviews, career paths, and early action on underperformance
• Recruit, hire, and retain strong engineers; own the interview loop and raise the bar with every hire
• Grow output per engineer through tooling and automation before growing headcount; if you roll your eyes at this, do not apply.

Partnership & Representation

• Represent Application Development with clinical, operations, finance, and IT leaders; translate business priorities into engineering plans and engineering constraints into business terms
• Partner with Product Management, Data, Infrastructure and others to insure the success of Digital's products.
• Participate in pilot and rollout conversations with field agencies and operational partners
• Partner with IT on shared environments, security review, identity, and the boundary between the application platform and enterprise infrastructure
• Contribute to technical strategy and investment cases, including measuring the team's impact on Pennant outcomes

JOB REQUIREMENTS (Education, Experience, Knowledge, Skills & Abilities)

8+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years leading engineers as a people manager (1:1s, performance reviews, hiring, and difficult staffing decisions)

Led engineering at a startup or growth-stage company through the adoption of AI-assisted development, with measurable before-and-after results (cycle time, release frequency, defect rate, or output at flat headcount)

Personally built and shipped production software with AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or equivalent) within the past 6 months

Designed and operated a multi-service, cloud-hosted system with a production data layer and third-party integrations

Established a quality system (CI/CD, automated testing, code review standards, incident response) rather than inheriting one

Experience