Founding Product Engineer - Clinical Systems

RDI - Your IVD CRO; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Job summary

RDI is building the software that runs a modern diagnostics CRO. This role provides technical ownership of the platform, working directly with the CEO and users to decide what to build, write the code, ship it, and own the outcome.

You will own architecture, CI/CD, monitoring, security, and production reliability, turning prototypes into reliable production systems while improving complex workflows with AI where it adds leverage.

Qualifications

• You are a product engineer who can actually ship production software.
• Comfort across the stack and comfortable inheriting code you did not write.
• You care about users, reliability, data integrity, and whether the system solves the problem.
• You do not need a product manager to turn ambiguity into a spec.

Responsibilities

• Own and improve the internal software RDI already uses to run clinical studies.
• Build new products across study planning, operations, data, regulatory workflows, and automation.
• Turn rapidly developed prototypes into reliable production systems.
• Own architecture, testing, CI/CD, monitoring, authentication, security, migrations, and production reliability.
• Work directly with clinical, laboratory, data, and operating teams instead of layers of management.
• Understand ugly real-world workflows and make them simpler.
• Use AI aggressively where it adds leverage without outsourcing engineering judgment.
• Decide what should be built, bought, integrated, automated, or left alone.
• Diagnose failures to root cause and improve the system.

Skills

Full-stack proficiency

Production software

Ownership

AI integration

System architecture

Regulated software awareness

Tools

CI/CD

Monitoring

Authentication

Security best practices

Cloud platforms

Job description

The Role

RDI is building the software that runs a modern diagnostics CRO.

RDI is building the software that runs a modern diagnostics CRO. We already have working internal products, real clinical workflows, real users, and a clear list of problems worth solving. We now need an engineer to take technical ownership of the platform and turn rapid product development into a durable engineering capability. This is an unusually broad engineering job. You will work directly with the CEO and the people using the software. You will understand the problem, decide what should be built, write the code, ship it, see how it performs in the real world, and remain responsible when something breaks. You own the outcome, not the ticket. If you are capable of substantially more than the slice of the system your current company lets you touch, that is the point of this role.

The Work

You will:

• Own and improve the internal software RDI already uses to run clinical studies
• Build new products across study planning, operations, data, regulatory workflows, and automation
• Turn rapidly developed prototypes into reliable production systems
• Own architecture, testing, CI/CD, monitoring, authentication, security, migrations, and production reliability
• Work directly with clinical, laboratory, data, and operating teams instead of receiving requirements through layers of product management
• Understand ugly real-world workflows and make them simpler
• Use AI aggressively where it creates leverage without outsourcing engineering judgment to it
• Decide what should be built, bought, integrated, automated, or left alone
• Diagnose failures to root cause and improve the system rather than patching symptoms
• Establish the engineering standards that future engineers at RDI will inherit

Who We Are Looking For

You are a product engineer who can actually ship production software.

You are comfortable across the stack and comfortable inheriting code you did not write. You care about users, reliability, data integrity, and whether the system actually solves the problem.

You do not need a product manager to turn an ambiguous problem into a specification before you can start thinking.

You probably have enough experience to know what good engineering looks like and enough ambition that you still want to build it yourself.

Experience in healthcare, clinical research, regulated software, or life sciences is useful but not required. Intellectual curiosity is.

What We Are Not Looking For

• An engineering manager who no longer wants to code
• Someone who needs a PM, designer, QA team, and detailed ticket before work can begin
• Someone who wants to spend months debating architecture before users see anything
• Someone interested in AI-generated code but not accountable for what happens after it ships
• Someone who considers unfamiliar code beneath them
• Someone looking for a comfortable seat inside a large engineering organization

You will have more surface area here than at a company many times our size. That is both the opportunity and the cost.

Why Join

Because you want the whole problem.

You can talk to the user in the morning, change the product in the afternoon, and see whether it worked.

You can build systems that directly affect how clinical studies are planned, executed, monitored, and delivered.

And if we do this right, a few years from now you will be able to say: I Built The System This Company Runs On.

This role is in person at our Los Angeles / Van Nuys office, five days a week. Relocation assistance is available.

About RDI

RDI is an IVD-focused CRO. Since 2008, we have run hundreds of diagnostic trials for leading test manufacturers.

We are a small, highly operational company. Engineers sit close to the business, close to users, and close to the consequences of what they build.

If you want ownership more than organizational comfort, you will understand why that is valuable.

About Our Process

This search is led directly by RDI's CEO. If your background is a strong fit, you will speak with him directly.

Given applicant volume, we cannot respond to everyone, but we respond to every strong application.