Principal Founding Engineer

About the role

This is a Founding Principal Engineer opportunity with a Series A New York virtual mental health clinic for children, young adults and families. The role is the first senior engineer hired onshore, writing production code on core systems, setting engineering standards, directing an offshore team and leading AI adoption, working alongside the CEO on technical plans. You’ll set technical direction and own architecture across telehealth, the EHR, therapist onboarding, the patient dashboard and AI usage, make build-versus-buy decisions, and write hands-on code on the hardest, highest-stakes problems. You’ll lead and mentor the offshore team, establish code review, testing, on-call and incident response practice, own the reliability and security of clinical systems including HIPAA and payor compliance, and hire the first onshore engineers. The stack is TypeScript across the stack, with Node.js, React and AWS. The ideal candidate will have 8+ years building production software, including staff or principal-level experience, with deep full-stack skills from database schema to UI and a record of leading while staying hands-on. Experience with distributed or offshore teams, regulated or data-sensitive environments (healthcare is a plus) and a bias towards shipping with limited resources are expected. This is a hybrid position in New York City, three days a week in person, suited to an engineer who wants to build a technical function from the start. We're looking for someone curious, pragmatic, and eager to work across the stack with a small senior team. You'll own end-to-end delivery of major features, influence architecture, and mentor engineers.

What you'll do

• Ship customer-facing features on a weekly cadence.
• Partner with design and product on scoping and trade-offs.
• Drive technical quality through review, testing, and docs.
• Mentor one or two engineers on your team.

Requirements