Senior Engineering Manager (Network Value + Outcomes)

Headway; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 265,000 - 332,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity Compensation

Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage

HSA / FSA

401K

Work-from-Home Stipend

Therapy Reimbursement

16-week parental leave for eligible

Carrot Fertility annual reimbursement

13 paid holidays

Flexible PTO

Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

Training and professional development

Job summary

Headway is building a new mental healthcare system where patients, providers, and payers benefit from a scalable software platform.

The Senior Engineering Manager for Payer & Outcomes leads two cross-functional teams responsible for measurement backbone and utilization/cost insights, delivering high-impact outcomes while mentoring engineers and collaborating with Product, Data Science, and Commercial teams.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of engineering management experience at a high-growth startup or scale-up.
• 3–5+ years of experience as a software engineer.
• Track record of building and leading high-performing teams that delivered business outcomes through technical investment.
• Strong product mindset and cross-functional relationships that build trust with users and stakeholders.
• Experience owning an externally-committed metric, with the scope discipline that requires.
• Comfort with data- and ML-heavy systems: measurement, experimentation, and metric guardrails.

Responsibilities

• Lead, manage, and grow two engineering teams.
• Own delivery on a company-level outcomes key result, including its guardrails.
• Set the technical and operational roadmap across measurement, segmentation, and utilization.
• Develop your team through weekly 1:1s, mentorship, and direct feedback, and develop the manager reporting to you.
• Partner closely with Product, Clinical, Data Science, and Commercial to iterate quickly and rigorously.
• Contribute to the broader group and company strategy, not just your own roadmap.

Skills

Engineering management

Leadership

Product mindset

Cross-functional relationships

Data-informed

Python

React

AWS infrastructure

Tools

Python

React

AWS

Job description

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access.

We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work—credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation—is a nightmare. We've automated that.

But we're going further. Over 75,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 1 million patients.

We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale.

We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens.

We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission.

We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

Senior Engineering Manager, Payer & Outcomes

Headway's mission is a big one – to build a new mental health care system everyone can access. We've built technology that helps people find great therapists with the first software-enabled national network of providers accepting insurance.

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but the majority of providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people.

Headway is building a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access by making it easy for therapists to accept insurance and scale their practice.

Headway was founded in 2019. Since then, we've grown into a diverse, national network of over 60,000 mental healthcare providers across all 50 states who run their practice on our software and have served over 1 million patients.

We're a Series D company with over $325m in funding from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Accel, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Spark Capital, Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures and Health Care Service Corporation.

We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

About Engineering At Headway

Building a new mental healthcare system at Headway is only possible because of the scale and leverage that software can provide. The engineering team at Headway is a small but mighty team using technology to build that future (and have a fun time while doing it!).

Principles That Guide Us

• Focus on the mission: We view software as a means of effecting change in the world, not as an end unto itself. We write software to empower our patients and therapists to better solve the problems they're facing.
• Ship small, learn fast: We are building new and novel products and believe that we learn what our users need by quickly shipping and iterating.
• Everything is a product: Whether it's our patient search experience or a developer productivity improvement, we treat everything we build at Headway as a product with end-users in mind.
• Optimize for trust: We believe that engineers should be continually learning. To learn effectively and to be productive, engineers must feel safe asking questions and discussing mistakes.

Tools We Use

• Languages: Python 3, TypeScript
• Libraries & Frameworks: FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, React, Remix, Next.js
• Datastores: Postgres, Redis
• Infrastructure: AWS (Fargate, ECS, S3, SageMaker and more), Spark and Kafka
• Monitoring: Datadog, PagerDuty, Sentry
• Version Control: Github
• Vulnerability Management: Snyk, Semgrep
• Cloud Security: Lacework

About This Role

Headway's mission is to build a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access, one that works for patients, providers, and payers alike. Our Payer & Outcomes group is where we prove that model works. We build the systems that answer two questions insurers have never been able to answer well: did the care actually work, and was it worth it?

As Senior Engineering Manager for Payer & Outcomes, you'll lead the two teams that answer them. Outcomes builds our measurement backbone: collecting patient-reported outcomes at scale, tracking symptom improvement and retention to care, and turning that into evidence we can stand behind. Network Value builds the intelligence behind utilization and cost of care, covering patient acuity and segmentation, provider efficiency ranking, and the sub-network logic that routes a patient to the right level of care.

These two teams share data foundations, a measurement stack, and an audience, which is why they sit together under one leader. You'll own delivery on a company-level goal we have publicly committed to: significantly increasing the share of new patients with a baseline outcome measure, without increasing provider churn. That means holding quality and adoption in tension rather than trading one for the other.

You'll grow and mentor a team of roughly eight engineers plus an engineering manager, set the technical and operational roadmap across both pods, and partner daily with Product, Clinical, Data Science, and our payer-facing commercial teams. This is a deeply cross-functional role: your work is what lets Headway move payers from administrative oversight to genuine care partnership.

The stakes here are concrete. Elsewhere in the group we now review clinical notes and prompt providers to put a safety plan in place when a patient shows signs of suicidal risk. At full adoption across our network, that single intervention is estimated to prevent more than 1,000 deaths a year. Your teams build the measurement and targeting layer that decides where interventions like that get aimed, and whether we can prove they worked.

Who You Are

We're looking for an experienced engineering leader who is product-minded, data-informed, and energized by growth. You'll work closely with Engineering Leadership, Product, and Data to shape the future of Headway's payer strategy. There is an unusually direct line from your team's work to whether this model of care survives contact with the market.

In this role you will

• Lead, manage, and grow two engineering teams
• Own delivery on a company-level outcomes key result, including its guardrails
• Set the technical and operational roadmap across measurement, segmentation, and utilization
• Develop your team through weekly 1:1s, mentorship, and direct feedback, and develop the manager reporting to you
• Partner closely with Product, Clinical, Data Science, and Commercial to iterate quickly and rigorously
• Contribute to the broader group and company strategy, not just your own roadmap

Experience We're Seeking

• 6+ years of engineering management experience at a high-growth startup or scale-up, including managing managers or tech leads
• 3–5+ years of experience as a software engineer, enough to hold technical direction credibly
• A track record of building and leading high-performing teams that delivered business outcomes through technical investment
• A strong product mindset and cross-functional relationships that build trust with users and stakeholders
• Experience owning an externally-committed metric, with the scope discipline that requires
• Comfort with data- and ML-heavy systems: measurement, experimentation, and metric guardrails
• Nice to have: healthcare, insurance, or another regulated, high-trust domain
• Nice to have: value-based care, quality measurement, or utilization management
• Nice to have: prior experience with Python, React, and AWS infrastructure

You’ll love this role if you want

• Lead the teams that decide whether a new model of mental healthcare can be proven, not just described
• Own a number the company reports externally, with the autonomy that comes with it
• Build an engineering management layer beneath you rather than inherit a finished org

Compensation And Benefits

The expected base pay range for this position is $265,200 - 331,500, based on a variety of factors including qualifications, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for performance-based variable compensation and an equity grant, depending on the position and level.

We are committed to offering a comprehensive and competitive total rewards package, including robust health and wellness benefits, retirement savings, and meaningful ownership opportunities through equity. Compensation decisions are made holistically, ensuring fairness and alignment with market benchmarks while recognizing individual contributions and potential.

Benefits Offered Include

• Equity Compensation
• Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage
• HSA / FSA
• 401K
• Work-from-Home Stipend
• Therapy Reimbursement
• 16-week parental leave for eligible employees
• Carrot Fertility annual reimbursement and membership
• 13 paid holidays each year as well as a Holiday Break during the week between December 25th and December 31st
• Flexible PTO
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Training and professional development

We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview.

Headway participates in E-Verify.

Compensation Range: $265.2K - $331.5K