Director of Engineering
MediCircle· startup· Sep 8, 2026 · 2mo ago
New York, NY
Hybrid
Full-time
Director
$200K–$225K
6+ years exp
Job description
ABOUT MEDICIRCLE
MediCircle is building the national infrastructure to make prescription drugs affordable. Today, billions of dollars of perfectly usable medications go unused, while patients are forced to skip or abandon life-saving treatments due to cost. We exist to change that.
MediCircle reclaims unused medications, recertifies their quality using our patented process, and redistributes them through our licensed pharmacy. In doing so, we provide patients with medications at zero out-of-pocket cost, while generating savings for our payer, plan sponsor, and value-based care clients.
We are a VC-backed, early-stage healthcare technology company with a proven model and accelerating growth:
- $65M+ in medications reclaimed to date
- Active partnerships with market-leading customers, including national VBCs, PBMs, and regional health systems
- Rapidly expanding demand across enterprise and government channels
If our mission resonates with you, you are interested in joining a high-growth healthcare company, and you are energized by directly impacting the lives of millions of patients who can no longer access or afford their medications, we would love to hear from you.
ROLE OVERVIEW
You will work with MediCircle’s Head of Technology to lead the development and expansion of the technical foundation that powers MediCircle's national medication redistribution platform.
As MediCircle’s Director of Engineering, you will serve as a hands on engineering leader responsible for both technical execution and team leadership. You will guide system architecture, establish engineering standards, and ensure that MediCircle consistently delivers reliable, secure, and user-centered software.
This is a player/coach role. You will remain close to the technology (reviewing designs, contributing to critical systems, writing production code, etc.), while building the processes, team, culture, and operating discipline required to support the company’s growth.
You will work closely with MediCircle’s Head of Technology, product and operations leaders, and founders to translate business priorities into a clear engineering roadmap. You will help determine how the platform should evolve, how technical resources should be allocated, and how emerging technologies such as AI and automation can improve our redistribution platform, pharmacy operations, and software development velocity.
The ideal candidate combines strong technical judgment with pragmatic people leadership. You know how to build and scale systems, develop high-performing engineers, and create enough structure to improve execution without slowing down an early-stage company. You enjoy translating complex operational challenges into user-centric software, and you take pride in building systems that are elegant, durable, and capable of operating at national scale.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Lead engineering execution: Own the planning and delivery of engineering initiatives across MediCircle’s platform. Translate company and product priorities into clear technical plans, milestones, and ownership.
- Guide architecture and technical design: Lead the evolution of MediCircle’s backend architecture, data models, APIs, infrastructure, and frontend systems. Ensure technical decisions support reliability, security, compliance, and national scale.
- Remain technically hands-on: Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and the development of critical systems. Step into implementation when technical complexity, urgency, or team capacity requires it.
- Build and manage the engineering team: Recruit, onboard, manage, and mentor engineers. Establish clear expectations, provide actionable feedback, and create opportunities for engineers to grow in technical scope and leadership.
- Establish engineering best practices: Develop pragmatic standards for software design, testing, documentation, code review, deployment, observability, and security.
- Own delivery and operational performance: Improve planning accuracy, development velocity, system reliability, and accountability. Identify delivery risks early and ensure the team follows through on commitments.
- Partner across the organization: Work closely with pharmacy operations, patient operations, product, compliance, and company leadership to convert complex workflows and regulatory requirements into intuitive, scalable software.
- Advance AI-native engineering: Evaluate and implement AI tools that improve development workflows, decision-making, operational efficiency, and product functionality.
- Strengthen infrastructure and DevOps: Oversee CI/CD pipelines, containerized deployments, infrastructure as code, observability, incident management, and production reliability.
- Support technical strategy: Partner with the Head of Technology and executive team on MediCircle's Technology Roadmap, architectural priorities, build-versus-buy decisions, technical investments, and engineering hiring plan.
REQUIREMENTS
- Software Engineering Experience: You have 6-9+ years of software engineering experience, including experience building and operating complex production platforms.
- Engineering Leadership Experience: You have 2-4+ years of experience leading technical projects and/or managing engineering teams. You’ve led teams that have taken a product from 0 → scale.
- Builder DNA: You have built and scaled real systems from scratch — APIs, data models, backend services, and production infrastructure. You've taken a product or platform from an early stage through meaningful growth and increased operational complexity.
- Strong Product Judgement: You can take loosely defined operational problems and turn them into reliable, user-centered software. You move quickly while maintaining strict engineering discipline.
- Architecture & Backend Expertise: Extensive architecture and backend expertise, including experience designing APIs, data models, backend services, and scalable system architectures.
- Strong Full Stack Fluency: Proficient across the stack, ideally including Python (Django preferred), TypeScript / React, relational databases, and REST APIs.
- DevOps Fluency: Comfortable owning the full deployment lifecycle - experience with modern cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, containerized deployments, infrastructure as code (AWS CDK preferred), and production observability.
- AI Fluency: Actively stay on top of emerging AI technologies and how they can improve engineering productivity or product capabilities.
- Product-Minded Engineer: You think beyond code and deeply care about how software impacts real users. You design systems with usability, reliability, and operational realities in mind.
- Skilled communicator: You have excellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively with technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
- Culture Builder: You have experience establishing engineering standards and take pride in improving team planning, delivery, quality, and accountability.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- You have healthcare/pharmacy exposure and familiarity with regulated ops (clinical, pharmacy, payer/PBM, or analogous); if not, you have previously worked and/or currently work in regulated or compliance-heavy environments.
- You have early-stage startup experience or similar experience in fast-paced, high-growth environments.
- You have experience helping grow and lead engineering teams, systems, and processes.
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