Founding Engineer

People Culture Talent; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

People Culture Talent is recruiting a Founding Engineer for an early-stage, AI-native startup building healthcare software and data infrastructure. You’ll design and ship core product features, deploy AI-enabled workflows, and help establish scalable engineering practices.

You’ll own projects end-to-end, collaborating with founders and customers to translate complex requirements into reliable, compliant software that handles large enterprise data.

Qualifications

• 3–5+ years of experience building and shipping customer-facing software.
• Familiarity with healthcare data standards (FHIR, HL7, X12, EHR, claims, or similar).
• Strong experience with React and TypeScript.
• Full-stack experience across frontend applications, APIs, databases, and background services, including work with complex enterprise or operational data systems.
• Experience building and deploying AI-enabled product features using modern LLMs, agent frameworks, or retrieval-based systems.
• Familiarity with prompt engineering, evaluation workflows, and AI application development best practices.
• Strong product judgment and the ability to work effectively with limited process or oversight.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship product features across the stack from database design to frontend applications.
• Build and maintain integrations with external systems and enterprise data sources.
• Develop infrastructure powering AI-enabled product experiences and intelligent automation.
• Improve performance, reliability, and scalability as usage grows.
• Mentor future team members and help shape engineering culture.

Skills

React

TypeScript

Full-stack

AI features

Prompt engineering

Product judgment

Tools

LLM workflows

APIs

Job description

The Role

We're hiring a Founding Engineer to join an early‑stage company building AI‑powered software and data infrastructure for healthcare organizations operating in highly regulated, data‑intensive environments.

This is a foundational engineering hire. You'll work directly with the founders to design and build core product experiences, develop AI‑enabled workflows, implement customer deployments, and help establish the engineering systems and practices that will support the company's growth. The platform brings together large volumes of clinical, operational, and financial data to automate workflows, surface actionable insights, and improve decision‑making for enterprise healthcare customers.

The role is well suited for an engineer who enjoys working across product, design, and engineering, is comfortable wearing multiple hats, and thrives owning projects from initial concept through production.

Product Engineering

• Design, build, and ship product features across the stack, from database design and APIs through frontend applications
• Build and maintain integrations with external systems, structured datasets, and enterprise data sources
• Develop infrastructure that powers AI‑enabled product experiences, including LLM‑driven workflows and intelligent automation
• Improve application performance, reliability, and scalability as customer usage and data volumes grow
• Work closely with founders and users to translate complex operational requirements into intuitive software

Customer Deployments

• Partner with customers during implementation and onboarding
• Configure integrations, data mappings, and deployment workflows
• Participate in customer conversations and translate feedback into product improvements
• Support and maintain the systems you build, including incident response, debugging, and operational troubleshooting

Engineering Foundation

• Help establish engineering practices around testing, deployments, observability, security, and code review
• Build systems that meet the reliability and compliance expectations of enterprise customers
• Mentor future team members and help shape the company's engineering culture

What You’ll Bring

• 3–5+ years of experience building and shipping customer‑facing software
• Familiarity with healthcare data standards (FHIR, HL7, X12, EHR, claims, or similar)
• Strong experience with React, TypeScript, and modern web application development
• Full‑stack experience across frontend applications, APIs, databases, and background services, including work with complex enterprise or operational data systems
• Experience building and deploying AI‑enabled product features using modern LLMs, agent frameworks, or retrieval‑based systems
• Familiarity with prompt engineering, evaluation workflows, and AI application development best practices
• Strong product judgment and the ability to work effectively with limited process or oversight

Bonus

• Experience in customer‑facing engineering roles such as implementation engineering, solutions engineering, forward deployed engineering, or technical consulting
• Understanding of enterprise deployment requirements, security best practices, and compliance‑focused environments (HIPAA, SOC 2, etc.)
• Comfortable working in a fast‑paced startup where engineering, product, and customer success are closely intertwined

Benefits

The starting salary for this role is $180,000, with a range up to $240,000 USD. The provided salary depends on many factors, such as work experience and transferable skills, business needs and impact, and market demands.

About Our Client

Our client is an early‑stage, venture‑backed software company building an AI‑native platform for organizations managing complex operational and healthcare data. Their technology helps customers unify fragmented information, automate manual workflows, and generate actionable insights that improve decision‑making across clinical and business operations.

The founding team brings deep expertise across software engineering, machine learning, and enterprise systems, and is building a category‑defining platform for one of the largest and most data‑intensive industries. This is an opportunity to join at the earliest stages, work directly alongside the founders, and help shape both the product and engineering organization from the ground up.