1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access. We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work - credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation - is a nightmare. We've automated that.
But we're going further. Over 75,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 1 million patients. We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale. We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens.
We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.
The RoleArchitect and own the cloud platform that every engineer at Headway deploys on. Make deploys boring, scaling automatic, infrastructure self-serve, and cost attributable.
About Infrastructure Engineering at HeadwayBuilding a new mental healthcare system at Headway is only possible because of the scale and leverage that software can provide. Infrastructure Engineering is one of three teams in Engineering Foundations, alongside Agentic Engineering and Eddy, Headway's internal AI platform. We own the infrastructure Headway runs on, as well as the performance and scalability of Headway's FastAPI/Python monolith, and the AWS infrastructure it runs on. We are the paved road the rest of engineering builds on: databases, deploys, asynchronous platform, observability, autoscaling, and self-serve compute infrastructure.
As AI dramatically increases code velocity across the org, our mandate is to make every change safe from the start and build systems that get safer as they get faster.
About This RoleYou will be on the Infrastructure team, which owns the cloud platform Headway runs on. You will be the senior engineer driving work to isolate blast radius, make autoscaling trustworthy, and build a self-serve infrastructure platform so that the Infrastructure Engineering team focuses on the strategic and unusual, not the routine.
What You'll OwnDeployment architecture and blast-radius containment. Redesign deployment so that a mistake in one part of our service cannot block or take down others. Continue to drive our shift toward per-service deploy isolation and functional-area slices that contain failures rather than propagating them across the platform.
Container footprint and networking. Own the ECS and EKS footprint, evaluate broader EKS adoption for AI workloads, and design the next iteration of inter-service network connectivity.
Capacity and scaling. Own capacity for a spiky workload: floors computed ahead of demand rather than chased by reactive scaling, self-deriving from data, with drift caught early.
Self-serve infrastructure platform. Build the Terraform self-serve platform with guardrails so engineering teams own their standard infrastructure changes and Reliability Engineering reviews only the non-standard ones.
Cloud cost attribution and controls. Stand up per-team cost attribution across AWS, Datadog, and LLM spend. Make infrastructure costs visible and attributable so teams can make informed tradeoffs.
Python runtime and dependency health. Own how the monolith behaves under load: garbage collection, event loop contention, and the runtime limits that bite first. Lead the framework and package upgrades most teams defer.
A senior engineer who combines deep cloud and infrastructure expertise with the instincts to drive alignment across teams. You thrive in ambiguity, operate with a high degree of ownership, and are as comfortable setting technical direction as you are building. You make other engineers better through architecture reviews, runbooks, and paved-road tooling that raises the baseline for everyone who ships on the platform.
Experience we're seeking:
5 or more years in platform, infrastructure, or SRE roles at companies running significant production traffic
Deep AWS expertise and production ownership of compute and networking at scale (ECS, EKS, RDS, networking, IAM)
Strong infrastructure-as-code experience, particularly Terraform, including designing self-serve platforms for other engineering teams
Hands-on autoscaling and capacity engineering, and container orchestration with ECS and/or EKS
Track record making deploys safe and self-serve for other teams, not just your own
Nice to have:
FinOps and cloud cost optimization experience
Kubernetes and EKS depth
Observability tooling at scale (Datadog)
Experience in healthcare or other regulated environments
We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview.
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A notice to Headway applicants: To protect yourself against phishing and recruitment fraud, please note that Headway only accepts applications through our official careers page at https://headway.co/careers. Headway will never refer you to external websites, ask for payment or personal information, or conduct interviews via messaging apps. All official communication will come from a @findheadway.com email address. If you are contacted by someone claiming to be from Headway via an unofficial channel, please do not share any information and report it as spam.
Skills Required
- 5 or more years of experience in platform, infrastructure, or Site Reliability Engineering roles at companies running significant production traffic
- Deep AWS expertise and production ownership of compute and networking at scale, including ECS, EKS, RDS, networking, and IAM
- Strong infrastructure-as-code experience, particularly Terraform, including designing self-service platforms for engineering teams
- Hands-on autoscaling and capacity engineering experience
- Container orchestration experience with ECS and/or EKS
- Track record of making deployments safe and self-service for other engineering teams
- FinOps and cloud cost optimization experience
- Deep Kubernetes and EKS experience
- Observability tooling experience at scale, particularly Datadog
- Experience in healthcare or other regulated environments
What the Team is Saying
Headway Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Multiple Cigna medical options plus dental and vision are offered with the company covering a majority of premiums, alongside employer-paid life and short/long-term disability. Feedback suggests day-one eligibility for coverage and mental-health cost support further bolster the health offering.
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Parental & Family Support — Up to 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave for eligible full-time employees is highlighted, and family-forming support is provided through Carrot Fertility. Feedback suggests contributions toward family healthcare premiums were increased to improve affordability for dependents.
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Affordable Benefits — Company coverage of a majority of medical, dental, and vision premiums and reimbursement of eligible therapy/copay costs up to about $2,100 per year reduce out-of-pocket expenses. Remote-work stipends and professional-development funds add practical value without high employee cost.
Headway Insights
What We Do
Headway’s mission is a big one – to build a new mental health care system everyone can access. We’ve built technology that helps people find great therapists with the first software-enabled national network of providers accepting insurance. 1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but the majority of providers don’t accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway is building a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access by making it easy for therapists to accept insurance and scale their practice. Headway was founded in 2019. Since then, we’ve grown into a diverse, national network of over 60,000 mental healthcare providers across all 50 states who run their practice on our software and have served over 1 million patients. We’re a Series D company with over $325m in funding from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Accel, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Spark Capital, Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures and Health Care Service Corporation.
Why Work With Us
The demand for mental health care has never been higher, underscoring the need for solutions like Headway that increase accessibility to clinical care. We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem.
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Headway Offices
Remote Workspace
Employees work remotely.
Headway employees work remotely across the US, with the option to work from offices in New York City, San Francisco and Seattle.
