Head of Data Engineering

Pivotal Health; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 240,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Pivotal Health is seeking a Head of Data Engineering to own the platform, architecture, and team behind our end-to-end data infrastructure. You will shepherd data pipelines, processing, storage, and APIs, enabling multiple teams to publish and consume clean data at scale.

You bring 10+ years in software/data infrastructure, strong code-first data architectures, and a bias for maintainable, secure, and observable systems.

Qualifications

• Strong Software Engineering background transitioning to data/infrastructure.
• 10+ years in software/data infrastructure with platform inheritance experience.
• Hands-on with modern data architectures (event streaming, distributed processing, lakehouses).
• Understanding that schema ownership belongs to the engineering team.
• Ability to review system designs and balance speed with technical debt.

Responsibilities

• Evolve and modernize data infrastructure with code-driven patterns.
• Build and lead a software-first data engineering team.
• Provide infrastructure and APIs for product teams to own domain models.
• Own the data lifecycle from ingestion to exposure for IDR and ML models.
• Promote software engineering best practices across pipelines, IaC, and observability.
• Implements security, access controls, and privacy guardrails.

Skills

Data infrastructure

Distributed systems

CI/CD

Cloud-native

Data platform

APIs

Software engineering

Code-first data architectures

Schema ownership

Security & compliance

Tools

Kafka

Spark

Lakehouse

Kubernetes

CI/CD tooling

Job description

About Pivotal Health

Pivotal Health is the leading technology platform that helps healthcare providers get paid fairly in an increasingly complex reimbursement landscape.

Today, many providers face persistent underpayment from health insurance companies, despite delivering high-quality care. While processes like IDR (Independent Dispute Resolution) were designed to promote fairness, they’re often administrative-heavy, time-consuming, and difficult to navigate without the right tools.

Pivotal Health combines software, data, and service into a seamlessly integrated, AI-driven platform that simplifies these complex reimbursement workflows. We help providers efficiently dispute underpaid claims, reduce administrative burden, and recover the reimbursement they’re entitled to; without adding more work to already stretched teams.

Our full-service IDR solution is just the starting point. We’re building solutions that enable providers to operate with clarity, control, and confidence across the reimbursement journey.

About The Role

We are hiring Pivotal’s Head of Data Engineering, an engineering leader who will own the platform, architecture, and team powering our end-to-end data infrastructure.

We view Data Engineering as a specialized discipline of Software Engineering, not a traditional analytics or database-administration function. We are looking for a systems-minded leader with strong software engineering fundamentals who treats data infrastructure with the same rigour as core backend services, emphasizing CI/CD, maintainability, scalability, and code quality over traditional GUI tools and SQL-only workflows.

You will inherit an existing data foundation and lead its evolution into a modern, distributed, high-throughput platform. You will think holistically about data across its entire lifecycle: ingestion, processing, storage, and consumption interfaces. Rather than siloing data modeling within your team, you will build the platform and tools that enable the entire software engineering organization to own their schemas, publish clean data, and consume platform services seamlessly.

What You’ll Do

• Evolve & Modernize Data Infrastructure: Inherit and assess our existing data systems, charting a pragmatic path to scale them using modern, code-driven software patterns and cloud-native tools.
• Build a Software-First Engineering Team: Hire, mentor, and lead a team of high-caliber software engineers who specialize in data pipelines, data processing, and database internals...
• Build the Platform, Not the Schema: Product, Engineering, AI, Business Intelligence teams are your primary customers. Provide the infrastructure, streaming/batch frameworks, and APIs so product teams can own their domain models and schemas.
• Own the Data Lifecycle: Build robust, observable, high-performing capabilities for ingesting, transforming, storing, and exposing data for the IDR platform, AI/ML models, and internal services.
• Promote Software Engineering Best Practices: Employ rigorous software engineering practices across data pipelines including automated testing, IaC, version control, and observability.
• Security & Compliance Hardening: Implement programmatically enforced security, access controls, and privacy guardrails for sensitive data.

Who You Are

• You come from a strong Software Engineering background and moved into data/infrastructure space because you love building data-intensive distributed systems.
• 10+ years in software / data infrastructure with proven experience in inheriting an existing platform architecture rather than needing a greenfield slate.
• Deep hands-on experience with modern, code first data architectures (event streaming, distributed processing, modern lakehouses, containerized orchestration). You focus on systems engineering over legacy systems=
• You understand schema and domain model ownership belongs to the engineering team. You excel at building internal tools and APIs that make data publishing/consumption frictionless
• Able to review system design, weigh trade-offs between speed and technical debt, and stay close enough to the technology to earn the respect of senior engineers.

Extra Credit if you have:

• Experience with real-time/event driven healthcare or financial data streams (claims, clinical data, financial transactions)
• Background in HealthTech, FinTech, or another regulated industry handling sensitive data
• Experience building data platform specifically optimized for LLMs, product engineering, and production ML pipelines
• Strong familiarity with HIPAA, PHI, zero trust security patterns in cloud environments

Why You’ll Love Working Here

We’re a collaborative, low-ego team on a mission to make healthcare reimbursement fairer for providers. While we primarily hire around our core hubs–Los Angeles and New York–we remain open to exceptional talent outside those regions. Remote and hybrid flexibility varies by role and team, and is outlined in each job description.

If you’re excited by solving complex problems and making a real-world impact, we’d love to hear from you.

Benefits Include:

• Competitive compensation, including equity
• Full health, dental, and vision coverage
• Retirement savings plan through 401(k)
• Flexible time off
• Opportunities for company-wide connection and events

Ready to Make an Impact?

We’re building something meaningful; and we want you on the team.

Bring your ideas, curiosity, and drive, and let’s transform healthcare reimbursement together.

Employment Information

Work Authorization

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future employer sponsorship.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Pivotal Health is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.

Reasonable Accommodations

Pivotal Health provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with applicable laws. If you need assistance during the application or interview process, please let us know.

Background Checks

Employment is contingent upon successful completion of applicable background checks, where permitted by law.

At-Will Employment

Employment with Pivotal Health is at-will and may be terminated by either party at any time, with or without cause or notice, in accordance with applicable law.

Compensation Range: $240K - $270K