Director of Engineering, Application Platform

Bios Life; Cambridge (MA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Bios Life in the Boston/Cambridge area is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead its Application Platform team. This role blends 70% hands-on software development with 30% people leadership, guiding architecture, debugging, and delivery while mentoring a small engineering team.

You will collaborate with Product, Clinical Data, Infrastructure and other engineers to build scalable web and mobile applications in a healthcare technology environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with deep hands-on development.
• 5+ years of engineering leadership or people management experience.
• Strong Python development experience.
• Experience building mobile apps using React Native or equivalent cross‑platform tech.
• Strong backend experience with APIs, distributed systems, and cloud-native architectures.
• Ability to continue shipping production software while mentoring engineers.
• Experience contributing to architecture, code reviews, testing, and production delivery.

Responsibilities

• Remain hands-on with production software development, architecture, implementation, debugging, testing and delivery.
• Lead, mentor and develop a small team of experienced engineers.
• Provide technical leadership across backend services, APIs and cloud-native apps.
• Partner with Product and Staff Engineers to translate requirements into scalable systems.
• Improve engineering practices around testing, CI/CD, observability and reliability.
• Help scale the engineering organization through hiring and development of leaders.
• Encourage AI-assisted development tools while maintaining quality and maintainability.

Skills

Python

React Native

APIs

Distributed systems

Cloud-native architectures

Hands-on engineering

Leadership

Code reviews

CI/CD

Job description

Boston/Cambridge, MA | Hybrid: 3 days onsite / 2 days remote

70% Hands-On Engineering | 30% People Leadership

We are seeking a highly technical Director of Engineering to lead our Application Platform team while remaining deeply involved in hands-on software development.

This is not a traditional hands-off management role. The ideal candidate is currently a Principal Engineer who has some experience managing developers.

Approximately 70% of your time will be spent writing production code, solving complex technical problems, contributing to architecture, debugging, and delivering software. The remaining 30% will focus on managing, mentoring, hiring, and developing a small, high-performing engineering team.

You will work closely with Product, Clinical Data, Infrastructure, and other engineering teams to build and scale web and mobile applications in a fast-moving healthcare technology environment.

What You'll Do:

• Remain hands-on with production software development, architecture, implementation, debugging, testing, and technical delivery.
• Lead, mentor, and develop a small team of experienced engineers.
• Provide technical leadership across backend services, APIs, distributed systems, and cloud-native applications.
• Partner with Product and Staff Engineers to translate evolving requirements into scalable, maintainable systems.
• Improve engineering practices around testing, CI/CD, observability, reliability, and production operations.
• Help scale the engineering organization through hiring, mentorship, and development of future technical leaders.
• Encourage effective use of AI-assisted development tools and automation while maintaining high standards for software quality and maintainability.

What We're Looking For:

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with deep and recent hands-on development experience.
• 5+ years of engineering leadership, team leadership, or people management experience, ideally within startup, early-stage, or high-growth environments.
• Strong hands-on development experience with Python.
• Experience building mobile applications using React Native or comparable cross-platform technologies.
• Strong backend engineering experience involving APIs, distributed systems, and cloud-native architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to continue writing and shipping production software while managing and mentoring engineers.
• Experience contributing directly to architecture, code reviews, testing, debugging, and production delivery.
• Strong technical judgment and the ability to balance speed, scalability, reliability, and maintainability.

Strongly Preferred:

• Experience in healthcare, digital health, health technology, life sciences, or another regulated industry.
• Familiarity with HIPAA, healthcare workflows, clinical data systems, interoperability, or sensitive healthcare data.
• Experience with AI-assisted engineering tools, AI-enabled products, agentic systems, or engineering automation.
• Experience scaling engineering teams, systems, and practices in an early-stage or rapidly growing organization.

Location & Work Authorization:

Candidates must be located in the Boston/Cambridge area and able to work onsite three days per week.

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future employer-sponsored immigration support. We are unable to sponsor employment visas for this position.

No agencies, third-party recruiters, or staffing firms, please.