Technical Engineering Lead

Condor; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision, and life

Equity participation

401(k) with company match

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

Condor is seeking a Technical Engineering Lead in San Francisco to drive the architecture, delivery, and quality of our financial intelligence platform. This hands-on leadership role requires you to code, design, and mentor a team while owning key portions of the system end-to-end.

You will partner with product to shape what gets built, break complex initiatives into clear plans, and push to production with rigor and predictability.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience and hands-on leadership in driving production-grade systems.
• Experience leading design and delivery of complex projects and setting technical bar.
• Deep expertise in backend systems and architecture with real-world tradeoffs.
• Experience turning ambiguous requirements into sequenced plans and delivering to production.
• Mentoring engineers and growing a team; strong collaboration with product.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture and implementation of major platform components from design to production.
• Lead by example: write production code, review designs, and raise the technical bar.
• Partner with product managers to translate requirements into durable technical plans.
• Break down initiatives, manage scope and dependencies, drive delivery with rigor.
• Mentor engineers and help grow the team; contribute to hiring.

Skills

Hands-on leadership

Backend architecture

Production-grade systems

Python

Django/Flask

React

Communication

Mentoring

Hiring involvement

Regulated data experience

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science or Computer Engineering

Tools

Django

Flask

React

Job description

About Condor

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars are invested to discover and develop new therapies, yet the financial infrastructure behind that work has not kept pace. Clinical operations and finance live in disconnected worlds, forcing teams to make high-stakes decisions using fragmented tools and static data. Condor exists to change that. We are a system of action, building the financial intelligence layer that will power the next era of clinical development. Condor connects clinical operations, vendor activity, and financial signals into a single, real-time intelligence layer, giving R&D and finance leaders true command over how their organizations operate. Condor is pharma-native, AI-driven infrastructure built to scale industry standards we helped define with Big 4 partners. It powers prediction, control, and execution across the most complex R&D environments in the world.

Why This Matters Now

Condor has moved past proving the concept. Enterprise teams already trust Condor to run critical operations and finance. The work ahead is the hardest part: scaling something people depend on when the stakes are this high. Condor is a high-growth company backed by top institutional partners like Felicis and 645 Ventures, growing rapidly with Top 200 biopharma companies. This is a rare opportunity to help build foundational infrastructure that will shape how new therapies reach patients.

The Role

We are looking for a Technical Engineering Lead to drive the design, delivery, and quality of the systems behind Condor's financial intelligence platform. This is a hands-on leadership role: you lead first and foremost through your own technical work—architecture, code, and the hardest problems—and you bring a team with you as you do it. You will be one of the strongest engineers on the team and the person others look to when the problem is ambiguous or the stakes are high. You will own significant parts of the platform end-to-end, from technical design through production, and you will be accountable for the correctness and reliability of systems that enterprise biopharma teams trust to run mission-critical finance and operations. You will also own how work gets delivered. You will partner closely with product to shape what gets built and why, break complex initiatives into a clear plan, and drive them to production with rigor and predictability. As a lead, you will guide a small team of engineers—setting technical direction, reviewing their work, mentoring them, and helping grow the team through hiring—while staying deeply in the code yourself. This role is for an engineer who leads by example, executes with conviction, and is never above doing the groundwork with the team to ship something that matters.

Key Responsibilities

Technical execution (primary)

• Own the architecture and implementation of major parts of the platform, from design through production, staying hands-on in code and on the critical path.
• Solve the hardest and most ambiguous technical problems, and set the standard for engineering quality, correctness, and reliability in systems where mistakes carry real financial and operational consequences.
• Lead by example in day-to-day engineering: write production code, review designs and PRs, and raise the technical bar through your own work.
• Make sound architectural tradeoffs under real-world complexity, and document and communicate them clearly.

Product development & delivery

• Partner closely with product managers to shape what gets built, pressure-test requirements, and translate them into durable technical plans.
• Break down complex initiatives, sequence the work, manage scope and dependencies, and drive delivery to production with rigor and predictability.
• Establish pragmatic engineering practices—planning, execution, testing, and incident response—that keep the team fast and reliable as it scales.

Team leadership

• Guide a small team of engineers: set technical direction, review their work, and unblock them so they can do their best work.
• Mentor engineers and grow their skills, giving direct, constructive feedback and fostering a culture of ownership and accountability.
• Contribute to hiring—interviewing, raising the bar, and helping build a strong, flat, accountable engineering team without single points of failure.

Communication & stakeholders

• Communicate clearly across audiences, from deep technical discussion with engineers to concise tradeoff and status framing for product and leadership.
• Work effectively with cross-functional stakeholders, and represent the team's technical work credibly when engaging with customers or company leadership.

Required Skills & Experience

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of building and shipping production-grade systems as a hands-on senior or staff/principal-level engineer.
• Demonstrated technical leadership: leading the design and delivery of complex projects and setting the technical bar for a team, while remaining deeply hands-on.
• Deep expertise in backend systems and architecture, with the judgment to make sound tradeoffs under real-world complexity.
• Experience owning delivery: turning ambiguous requirements into a sequenced plan and driving it to production reliably.
• Experience guiding, mentoring, or leading other engineers, and a genuine interest in growing a team.
• Excellent communication skills, effective with both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders.
• A bias for action and a willingness to do the groundwork with the team to get things done.
• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong proficiency in Python and modern backend frameworks (Django, Flask, or similar); familiarity with React and full-stack delivery.
• Experience building AI-native or data-intensive platforms, including LLM-based systems, agentic workflows, or large-scale data infrastructure.
• Experience in regulated, high-correctness, or financial data domains.
• Experience contributing to hiring and helping scale an engineering team.
• Experience working in a high-growth, Series A-C startup environment.

What we offer

• Competitive compensation and meaningful equity participation
• Comprehensive employee benefits, including 100% company-paid health, dental, vision, and life insurance
• 401(k) plan with a 3% company match that vests immediately
• Unlimited PTO

Condor is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.