Staff Software Engineer, Privacy

About Us:

Here at Ambience, we never set out to be just another scribe. We’re building the AI intelligence platform that restores humanity to healthcare and drives meaningful ROI for health systems across the country.

Our technology helps providers focus on delivering great care by removing the administrative burden that pulls them away from patients and away from their most impactful work. Ambience delivers real-time coding-aware documentation and clinical workflow support across ambulatory, emergency and inpatient settings at the top health systems in North America.

Our teams operate relentlessly with extreme ownership to build the best solutions for our health system partners. We value candor, positivity and deep thought — and we expect a lot from each other because we know the problems we’re solving truly matter.

Ambience was ranked #1 for Improving the Clinician Experience in the KLAS Research Emerging Solutions Top 20 Report, recognized by Fast Company as one of the Next Big Things in Tech, named one of the best AI companies in healthcare by Inc., and selected as a LinkedIn Top Startup in 2024 and 2025. We’re backed by Oak HC/FT, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), OpenAI Startup Fund, and Kleiner Perkins — and we’re just getting started.

The Role:

Ambience handles PHI for millions of patient encounters across the nation's leading health systems. That trust is earned through technical controls that actually work, not policies that live in a PDF.

You'll own the systems that protect patient data: access control, audit logging, data retention, and the compliance infrastructure that lets us operate inside the most security-conscious health systems in the country. You'll design systems that enforce least-privilege access, build audit infrastructure that can withstand compliance scrutiny, and create data lifecycle pipelines that honor retention obligations automatically.

Privacy engineering here isn't a checkbox exercise. It's what lets us sell and expand into demanding enterprise health systems.

Our engineering roles are hybrid in our SF office (3x/week).

What You’ll Own:

• Access Control & Authorization — Design and implement granular RBAC across our application. Enforce least-privilege policies, and build workflows requiring users to document why they're accessing specific PHI.

• Audit Logging & Compliance — Ensure comprehensive audit logs across all application touch points where PHI is accessed. Integrate with SIEM so logs are queryable and useful for real compliance investigations, not just checkbox compliance.

• Data Retention & De-identification — Build infrastructure supporting per-org retention configurations across all PHI artifact types: EHR chart data, transcripts, audio recordings, logs. Scale intelligent de-identification pipelines across multi-modal clinical data while preserving utility for downstream use cases.

Who You Are: 

• 7+ years in software engineering, 2+ focused on security, privacy, or compliance infrastructure

• Staff-level scope: owned cross-cutting initiatives, influenced technical direction across teams

• Strong backend fundamentals in Python, Go, TypeScript, or similar

• Built access control systems, audit infrastructure, or data lifecycle pipelines

• In SF, 3x/week in-person

Why Here:

At most companies, privacy engineering is a side quest. Here, it directly enables sales and expansion into the most demanding health systems in the country. You'll own our privacy infrastructure end-to-end and set the standard for what best-in-class looks like. Small team, high trust, direct access to leadership. Staff engineers here shape technical direction, not just execute on it.

We offer a base compensation range of approximately $250,000–$300,000 per year, exclusive of equity. This intentionally broad range provides flexibility for candidates to tailor their cash and equity mix based on individual preferences. Our compensation philosophy prioritizes meaningful equity grants, enabling team members to share directly in the impact they help create.

Outside of this range? We still encourage you to apply. We take an individualized approach to compensation that accounts for experience, scope, and the life factors that matter to each candidate.

Life at Ambience

Working at Ambience means opting into a high-ownership, high-trust environment built for people who want to grow fast, operate decisively and focus on work that matters. This could be the right place for you if you want to

• Work on mission-critical AI technology that directly improves clinicians’ day-to-day lives and health system financial health across some of the most complex, high-stakes workflows in the world.

• Join a “dream team” culture where we hire exceptional people, expect exceptional outcomes and invest deeply in feedback and continuous growth. We operate as a championship team, and that means being ok with hard, uncomfortable, ambiguous problems that lead to real greatness.

• Operate with real ownership and accountability in an environment where there are no bystanders: If something is broken, we fix it! You will have meaningful autonomy and be expected to drive work to completion.

To help you do your best work, we pair these expectations with benefits intentionally designed to help you feel supported and safe at Ambience and beyond. Some of our key benefits include

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

• 401(k) with a company match of up to 3% of base salary

• A remote-friendly culture (with a San Francisco HQ) and full equipment provisioning to ensure you can work effectively from wherever you’re based.

• Parental leave to support your family needs

• Annual company-wide off-sites, team off-sites and regular team lunches and all-hands gatherings, with travel, lodging and meals covered

• Flexible time off with no annual cap, company-wide holidays and an annual holiday shutdown from December 24–January 1 designed to support real rest and long-term sustainability.

Ambience Healthcare is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply.

Ambience is committed to supporting every candidate’s ability to fully participate in our hiring process. If you need any accommodations during your application or interviews, please reach out to our Recruiting team at [email protected]. We’ll handle your request confidentially and work with you to ensure an accessible and equitable experience for all candidates.

Ambience Healthcare has become aware of scams targeting jobseekers with fake jobs and even interviewing people. Our emails will always come from @ambiencehealthcare.com. We would never our ask candidates to download apps or make any form of payment(s). If you are contacted through WhatsApp, Telegram, similar but fake email domains, or asked to make a payment, these contacts are not legitimate. Report the issue immediately to LinkedIn and the FBI.