Lead Engineer

Parsley Health; New York (NY); Remote; USD 240,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity stake

401(k) + Employer Matching

Hybrid/Remote option with NYC HQ

Healthcare insurance options

Wellness stipend

Professional development stipend

Job summary

Parsley Health is a remote-first company seeking a Principal Engineer to lead engineering with AI-centric product development. You will ship new products and systems quickly at a high quality bar, setting the standard for product judgment, code quality, and production rigor.

You will own backend and infrastructure, collaborating with the CTO and cross-functional teams. The role supports EST scheduling, with possible NYC hybrid days, empowering a small, high-trust engineering team to push

Qualifications

• Track record of using AI to build real products and systems faster without quality loss.
• Excellent product judgment to decide what to build or cut.
• Unusually high quality bar for code, design, and production rigor.
• Founding-engineer DNA or CTO/VPE background for small, high-trust teams.

Responsibilities

• Ship new product surface area quickly with high quality; AI drives speed.
• Stand up AI-native workflows; define toolchain patterns, evals, guardrails, prompts.
• Keep backend and infrastructure healthy; own CI/CD, deployment hygiene, observability, architecture decisions.
• Set the hiring bar; be the technical screen and ensure strong candidates say yes.

Skills

AI in products

Product judgment

Code quality

Founding engineer DNA

Tools

Go

Kotlin

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

Node.js

TypeScript

React

Next.js

Job description

Principal Engineer

Parsley Health · Engineering · Remote (US), with 2-5 days/month in our NYC office · Full-time

About Parsley Health

Parsley Health is rebuilding primary care around root-cause, whole-person medicine. Our members get board-certified clinicians, health coaches, advanced testing, and a care platform that connects the dots across all of it.

The moment

We're at the start of the most interesting engineering chapter in our company's history. The team is small, the surface area is large, and the decisions we make over the next year - about architecture, tooling, hiring, and how humans and AI build software together - will shape the product for years. We're hiring the engineer who can be at the center of that.

The role

As Principal Engineer, you're the senior-most individual contributor on a small, high-leverage team. Your main job is to ship new products and systems, fast, at a high quality bar, with AI as a core capability in how you work. You set the bar — for product judgment, code quality, design, production rigor, and hiring — through the example of your own work.

You also own and maintain the infrastructure and backend that carry the product. It's not your full-time focus, but you understand the stack deeply enough to keep it healthy, debug it when it matters, and make the right architectural calls when they come up.

You'll work directly with the CTO and partner across Product, Clinical, and Security.

We are open to candidates who are full remote, but it will be ideal to be in EST/CST and able to work on an EST schedule. It is also very impactful if the candidate can be based in the NYC metro area and able to come into the office to meet with the team in a hybrid setting.

What you'll do in your first 6 months

• Ship new product surface area, fast. Take new ideas from zero to production with a quality bar that makes the rest of the team raise theirs. AI is how you compress weeks into days.
• Stand up AI-native workflows for the team. Define how we use Claude, Cursor, and the rest of the toolchain - patterns, evals, guardrails, prompts - so AI leverage is a team capability, not a personal habit.
• Keep the foundations healthy. Own the backend and infra well enough to make sure nothing brittle ships and production stays boring. CI/CD, deploy hygiene, observability, architecture decisions.
• Set the hiring bar. Be the technical screen and the reason strong candidates say yes.

What we're looking for

Primary requirements

• A track record of using AI to build real products and systems dramatically faster than the old way - with no loss of quality. You have strong, lived opinions about where AI tools shine and where they lie, and shipped work that proves it.
• Excellent product judgment. You understand the user, you know what to build and what to cut, and you make the calls that a junior engineer would defer up.
• An unusually high quality bar for code, design, production rigor, and what "done" means.
• Founding-engineer DNA - or an ex-CTO/VPE coming back to the code. You're effective in small, high-trust teams with wide scope and ambiguous problems.

Important, but not the most critical

• Solid backend experience in Go or Kotlin (strong preference for both) - enough to own services, not just pass them through.
• Competent with AWS or GCP (preference for GCP) and with production Kubernetes. You can debug it, evolve it, and know when to stop improving it.
• Full-stack comfort across Node/TypeScript services and React/Next.js on the frontend.

Compensation & Benefits

• Generous compensation package based on experience
• Equity stake for all employees based on role level
• 401(k) + Employer Matching program
• Hybrid opportunity with remote work and on site at our NYC HQ
• Complimentary Parsley Health Complete Care membership
• Subsidized Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance plan options
• Generous flexible time off plan
• Annual professional development stipend
• Annual wellness stipend

Parsley Health is committed to providing an equitable, fair and transparent compensation program for all employees.

The starting salary for this role is between $240,000 - $350,000, depending on skills and experience. We take a geo-neutral approach to compensation within the US, meaning that we pay based on job function and level, not location.

Individual compensation decisions are based on a number of factors, including experience level, skillset, and balancing internal equity relative to peers at the company. We expect the majority of the candidates who are offered roles at our company to fall healthily throughout the range based on these factors. We recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced (or more senior) than this job description as posted. If that ends up being the case, the updated salary range will be communicated with candidates during the process.

At Parsley Health we believe in celebrating everything that makes us human and are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We embrace diversity and are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better we can serve our members.

Important note

In light of recent increase in hiring scams, if you're selected to move onto the next phase of our hiring process, a member of our Talent Acquisition team will reach out to you directly from an @parsleyhealth.com email address to guide you through our interview process.

Please note:

• We will never communicate with you via Microsoft Teams
• We will never ask for your bank account information at any point during the recruitment process, nor will we send you a check (electronic or physical) to purchase home office equipment

We look forward to connecting!

#LI-Remote