Head of Engineering

Gaia Health; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Gaia Health in San Francisco is seeking a founding Head of Engineering to build the technical backbone for personalized medicine, overseeing platform development, data infrastructure, and integrations that connect patient and physician experiences with our health ecosystem.

You will hire and lead the engineering team, establish the engineering culture from day one, and collaborate closely with product and design to ensure interface quality and HIPAA-first compliance as we scale AI-enabled health

Job description

Head of Engineering Gaia Health

Full-time, San Francisco

About the Role

Gaia is a consumer health company re-defining our experience with medicine across the whole stack. We have created technological breakthroughs in drug delivery technology that enable once monthly controlled-release of medicines rather than needing daily pills, and alongside this we’re building a tech platform for personalized medicine.

Gaia is hiring a founding Head of Engineering to build the technical backbone of the system that enables personalized medicine. You’ll design and build our platform — the patient and physician experiences, the data infrastructure, and the integrations that connect our products to the broader healthcare ecosystem — and hire the team that grows it with you. We believe in building things the right way: patient trust comes first, compliance is architecture rather than paperwork, and the systems we ship deserve the same craft as the medicine they support.

What You’ll Own

• The platform: backend, data infrastructure, and patient- and physician-facing web and app experiences, built hands-on

• Integrations with our pharmacy, clinical, diagnostic, and wearable partners — each one expanding what our platform can do for patients

• HIPAA-first compliance architecture and the company’s standards for safe, effective AI –

• Hiring and leading the engineering team, setting the engineering culture from day one –

• Deep partnership with our product lead and design team — interface quality is an engineering concern here

• Championing AI-native ways of working across the company

What You’ll Bring

• 8+ years of engineering experience, including leading engineers, and the hands-on range to architect and build across the stack today

• Production experience with sensitive or regulated data, and third-party integrations that held up in the real world

• A record of shipping fast in zero-to-one environments while making deliberate build-vs-buy and technical-debt decisions

• Product sensibility, genuine collaboration with design, and clear written communication

• Self-awareness, low ego, and the instinct to bring in experts early

• Preferred: Healthcare experience (FHIR, e-prescribing, telehealth, wearables) and shipped AI/LLM features are a plus — patient-trust instincts are a must