Staff Software Engineer
Hands-on Staff Software Engineer and founding tech lead at a seed-stage healthcare AI startup building AI agents that automate clinical trial workflows. You'll ship AI-powered products end-to-end (LLM features, agentic workflows), mentor three junior engineers, and work hybrid from San Francisco's Financial District.
- Compensation
- $210K–$260K / yr
- Location
- San Francisco, California, United States
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Full time
- Experience
- 1+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Tech lead / technical anchor experience on an engineering team
- Full-stack product engineer who owns features end-to-end (backend-leaning generalists welcome)
- Mentor / bar-raiser able to establish engineering best practices
- 8-15 years full-stack product engineering, building AI/LLM features
- Zero-to-one, customer-facing product background (not deep infra)
- Recent (1-2 years) hands-on shipping of LLM features / AI agents in production
Nice to have
- Mix of startup (seed-Series B, founding/early hire) and larger-company experience
- CS degree or equivalent
- Production AI evals / LLM observability (LangSmith, Braintrust, W&B); multi-step agentic pipelines
- Genuine interest in bio, life sciences, or healthcare
Full description
Staff Software Engineer
Our client is a seed-stage healthcare/life-sciences company building AI agents that automate clinical trial workflows — attacking one of the biggest bottlenecks in drug development. Backed by $7M+ in funding, the platform is already used across 400+ research sites. This is a founding tech-lead role on a small, high-impact engineering team.
The role: A hands-on Staff Software Engineer (8+ yrs) to be the technical anchor of a small team — writing and reviewing code daily while mentoring three junior engineers and establishing engineering best practices, and partnering with product, customer success, and founders to ship zero-to-one AI-powered products.
Responsibilities
- Own and build AI-powered products end-to-end (agentic workflows, LLM features with production evals)
- Technical lead and mentor for three junior engineers; set best practices for code review and process
- Partner with CTO, PM, and customer success to shape zero-to-one products
- Architect and deliver full-stack apps across frontend, backend, infra, and data pipelines
Must-have
- Tech lead / technical anchor experience on an engineering team
- Full-stack product engineer who owns features end-to-end (backend-leaning generalists welcome)
- Mentor / bar-raiser able to establish engineering best practices
- 8–15 yrs full-stack product engineering, building AI/LLM features
- Zero-to-one, customer-facing product background (not deep infra)
- Recent (1–2 yrs) hands-on shipping of LLM features / AI agents in production
Nice-to-have
- Mix of startup (seed–Series B, founding/early hire) and larger-company experience
- CS degree or equivalent
- Production AI evals / LLM observability (LangSmith, Braintrust, W&B); multi-step agentic pipelines
- Genuine interest in bio, life sciences, or healthcare
Compensation & logistics
- Base salary: $210K–$260K, flexible for exceptional candidates
- Equity: 1–1.5%
- Full-time, hybrid: 3 days/week in-office (Mon, Tue, Thu), Financial District, San Francisco
- Visa: open to transfers (e.g., OPT, H-1B transfers); no new sponsorships
- Interview process: 3 steps — 30-min intro call, virtual system design interview, final on-site (technical + behavioral + team lunch)