The Role
Lead and scale the engineering organization, set technical strategy and architecture, hire and develop managers and senior engineers, ensure execution, reliability, security/compliance (HIPAA), and represent engineering to leadership, board, and partners.
Summary Generated by Built In
Location: NYC Metro Area (Williamsburg Office, 3+ days/week)
Reports to: CEO
Photon gives patients ownership of prescriptions. Our platform enables clinicians to send prescriptions to patients via text, which saves them time by allowing their patients to shop between pharmacies. The vision is to help consumers save money by increasing transparency.
We're looking for a Head of Engineering to scale our engineering organization at Photon. This is the top technical leadership role. You'll be accountable for engineering across the platform: patient experience, customer integrations, the infrastructure that connects prescribers, patients, and pharmacies. You'll set technical direction, grow and develop a team, and own how we build across the org.
You'll work as part of the leadership team, partnering with the CEO, Product, Design, Commercial, and Ops to decide what we build, how fast, and at what cost. You'll be responsible for the things that don't show up in a single sprint: org structure, technical strategy, the bar for talent, and the reliability of infrastructure that millions of patients depend on.
If you've scaled engineering teams in a complex space, you can set direction without waiting to be told what to do, and you want ownership of a function at a real inflection point, this role is for you.
- Own the engineering organization from structure, prioritization, and how teams are organized across patient experience, integrations, platform, and internal systems
- Set and drive technical strategy and architecture direction in close partnership with Product
- Build the leadership layer: hire, develop, and manage engineering managers and senior engineers, and raise the bar on the talent we bring in and keep
- Own execution and delivery across the full product surface, with clear priorities, strong alignment, and consistent shipping
- Own engineering's operational health: reliability, uptime, on-call, and incident response for prescribing infrastructure that can't go down quietly
- Own the security, privacy, and compliance posture of engineering in partnership with the relevant teams (HIPAA and beyond)
- Partner with the CEO and leadership team on company strategy, roadmap, and the hard tradeoffs
- Build and steward a strong engineering culture rooted in ownership, accountability, and high standards
- Manage engineering tooling decisions and key technical vendor relationships
- Represent engineering to the board, investors, and partners when it matters
Required Qualifications
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with 4+ years leading engineering teams – including managing managers or owning a full engineering function
- Strong track record of building and scaling engineering teams at early or growth stage
- Experience owning technical strategy and architecture for a meaningful product or platform
- Familiarity with APIs, integrations, marketplaces, or distributed systems at scale
- Proven delivery across multiple teams or a full product surface area
- Ability to create clarity in ambiguous environments – across priorities, ownership, and decision-making
- Experience working closely with Product, Commercial, and Ops at a leadership level in a fast-paced environment
- Strong communication skills, including the ability to address difficult situations directly and represent engineering to executives, the board, and partners
- Experience leveraging AI in engineering workflows or products
- Hands-on enough to stay technically credible and dive in when the situation calls for it
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in healthcare, fintech, or other complex, regulated environments
- Experience building or owning infrastructure platforms
- Familiarity with compliance frameworks (HIPAA, SOC 2)
Why Join Us
Photon is reimagining how prescriptions move through the healthcare system—making it simpler, faster, and more transparent for patients, providers, and pharmacies alike. You’ll:
- Own engineering at a company at a real inflection point, post-Series A, and define how the org scales from here
- Work on a problem almost everyone you know has experienced, and help fix a system that's broken in ways most people just accept
- These are hard problems, and we expect a lot, but the growth and impact that come with it are real
- Lead a team of truly exceptional software engineers
- Join a team that gives a shit – about the work, about each other, and about doing things the right way. High trust, high standards, and we actually like spending time together
Our Values
🍕🐀 Be a Pizza Rat – We’re ambitious subway dwellers. It’s our slice and we’re not letting go.
🍚 🍣 Make Rice – We don’t prepare fish until we’ve mastered rice. Quality is in details.
🛰️ 🌎 Put it in Orbit – We know success happens well after lift-off. The rocket isn’t our mission.
🔍 🏴☠️ Seek Buried Treasure – We’re digging in unexpected places. Our adventure has meaning.
🍄 🌒 Grow in Darkness – We’re thriving amidst forest decay. Our day in the sun will come.
The estimated base salary for this role is $240,000 – $280,000 USD annually. Actual compensation will depend on skills, qualifications, and experience, and includes equity and benefits. At our stage, we place significant value on equity as part of total compensation.
Skills Required
- 8+ years of software engineering experience
- 4+ years leading engineering teams, including managing managers or owning a full engineering function
- Track record of building and scaling engineering teams at early or growth stage
- Experience owning technical strategy and architecture for a meaningful product or platform
- Proven delivery across multiple teams or a full product surface area
- Ability to create clarity in ambiguous environments across priorities, ownership, and decision-making
- Experience partnering closely with Product, Commercial, and Ops at a leadership level
- Strong communication skills and ability to represent engineering to executives, the board, and partners
- Experience in healthcare, fintech, or other complex, regulated environments
- Familiarity with APIs, integrations, marketplaces, or distributed systems at scale
- Experience building or owning infrastructure platforms
- Familiarity with compliance frameworks (HIPAA, SOC 2)
- Experience leveraging AI in engineering workflows or products
- Hands-on enough to stay technically credible and dive in when necessary
Am I A Good Fit?
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The Company
What We Do
We're building a modern prescription network that empowers people to shop with their prescriptions in hand.
