Principal Software Engineer

Principal / Staff Software Engineer Oakland, CA — Hybrid (3 days/week onsite)
The OpportunityWe’re partnering with a profitable, rapidly growing platform at the intersection of healthcare, education, and AI. This is a rare opportunity to join as a founding-level engineer alongside a newly appointed CTO, shaping the next generation of intelligent systems in a high-impact, data-rich environment.
The product is already widely adopted by physicians across the U.S., with a strong network effect and a multi-sided marketplace connecting medical professionals, content creators, and enterprise partners. The next phase focuses on AI-driven intelligence, personalization, and workflow automation at scale.
Why This Role ExistsA new CTO has just joined and is building out a small, elite engineering team from the ground up. This is the first senior IC hire, with significant influence over architecture, technical direction, and product innovation.You’ll operate in a true 0→1 to 1→N environment:

• Early stage: rapid prototyping, experimentation, and validation
• Scaling phase: productionizing systems and collaborating with a distributed team

This is an evergreen mandate to hire exceptional engineers (multiple hires planned) — the bar is extremely high.
What You’ll DoThis is a deeply hands-on role with full ownership across the stack:

• Design and build scalable systems end-to-end — from architecture to production
• Develop agentic AI workflows leveraging LLMs and proprietary datasets
• Build intelligent knowledge systems that operate on high-volume, domain-specific data
• Drive growth and engagement engineering, including personalization and marketing systems
• Partner closely with product and leadership to validate new ideas directly with users
• Collaborate cross-functionally and with a high-performing international engineering team

Tech Stack

• Backend: Python, Django
• Frontend: React
• Cloud: AWS
• Database: PostgreSQL
• AI/ML: OpenAI + emerging agent frameworks

What We’re Looking For

• Principal/Staff-level engineer with a builder mindset
• Proven experience owning systems end-to-end in ambiguous environments
• Strong backend or full-stack capabilities (Python preferred)
• Experience designing data-intensive or knowledge-driven systems
• Familiarity with LLMs, agent frameworks, or applied AI workflows
• Ability to move between rapid experimentation and product ionization

Nice to have:

• Experience with healthcare or regulated datasets
• Exposure to growth engineering or marketing systems

Why This Role Stands Out

• Founding engineer-level impact with direct access to the CTO
• Opportunity to build AI-first systems from scratch in a complex domain
• Already-scaled product with millions of data points — not a greenfield gamble
• Rare combination of profitability, scale, and technical ambition

Compensation

• Base salary: $280K – $350K (flexible up to ~$400K for exceptional candidates)
• Bonus + meaningful equity

Additional Details

• Location: Oakland, CA (3 days onsite: Mon/Wed/Fri)
• Visa: H1B transfers supported

If you’re interested in building high-impact AI systems in a real-world, data-rich environment — while working in a small, elite team — this is an exceptional opportunity to do so.