Founding Software Engineer

Founding Software Engineer NYC Hybrid - Manhattan Office Compensation: $180,000–$220,000 USD base salary + equity in the company Shields Group Search is partnering with an early-stage mental health technology company that is expanding its engineering team. About the Company Our client builds software and operational infrastructure for psychotherapy practices. The platform helps therapists and practice owners understand how their businesses are performing, identify what needs attention, and reduce the administrative work required to run a practice. The company is expanding its engineering team as it grows. The Role We are looking for an experienced, generalist engineer who can own a deliverable end-to-end across the stack without needing well-defined requirements or close management. The company is also building toward a product where AI sits at the core of how the system works, rather than being bolted on after the fact. Experience building agentic or LLM-powered features is a strong plus. You will own both the roadmap and execution for whatever you take on. This includes discussing problems, identifying opportunities, forming opinions, proposing features, making tradeoffs, building the product, deploying it, and operating it in production. What You’ll Work On: • Pulling data from EHR platforms and transforming it reliably at scale • Building and improving analytics, metrics, reports, and operational insights • Creating features such as prioritized tasks and recommended actions • Building “talk to your data” and other conversational, AI-native experiences • Building production features that rely on LLMs and agentic workflows • Deepening and expanding EHR integrations • Improving reliability, scalability, and data quality across the platform • Owning the AWS infrastructure behind whatever you build You will occasionally speak directly with therapists and practice owners, but this is primarily a product-building role rather than a customer-success role. How the Team Uses LLMs The team uses Claude Code and Codex as core engineering tools and is looking for someone with a sophisticated, high-throughput agentic workflow, not someone who uses AI assistants only occasionally. That might mean running many agent sessions in parallel, splitting large initiatives into independent workstreams, or building tooling around agent orchestration, review, and testing. At the same time, the company does not want someone who relies on LLMs for basic reasoning. You should have developed strong engineering judgment before coding agents were widely available, including understanding how systems work, catching bad assumptions, and navigating difficult technical decisions independently. The ideal candidate was already an excellent engineer and has used LLMs to become dramatically more effective. What We’re Looking For • Comfort owning a deliverable full-stack and end-to-end • Comfort working from loosely defined requirements without close management; this is not a role for someone who needs to be managed or a junior engineer • Extensive professional experience with Claude Code, Codex, or both • Experience coordinating complex work across multiple coding-agent sessions • A track record of owning and shipping substantial production products • Strong Python backend experience • Strong TypeScript and React experience • Experience operating production systems on AWS • Strong PostgreSQL and data-system fundamentals • Experience building production features that use LLMs, ideally agentic ones • The ability to work across product, backend, frontend, data, infrastructure, and operations • Strong written and verbal communication • The ability to disagree directly and constructively • Empathy for users and teammates • Comfort operating with limited guidance Technology stack: FastAPI, React, PostgreSQL, ECS, RDS, ElastiCache, EC2, Playwright, and GitHub Actions. Experience with healthcare, EHRs, HIPAA, analytics products, browser automation, or custom agent tooling is useful but not required.This is an individual-contributor role with real scope and influence over the product. It may grow into technical leadership over time, but that is not a requirement to take it on.How the Team WorksThis is an early-stage company with aggressive goals, and the pace reflects that. It is a high-intensity environment, not a standard 9-to-5.At the same time, you will have substantial control over how you structure your day. The team cares about outcomes, communication, and ownership rather than fixed hours or performative availability.This is a high-autonomy position for someone who wants significant responsibility and influence.You will work directly with the founder and foundational engineer, alongside an engineer focused on data and integrations. This Role Is Not a Fit If You: Need detailed specifications before making progressRequire frequent hand-holding or close managementTreat generated code as trustworthy by defaultRely on LLMs to do the underlying reasoning for youAvoid direct or difficult conversationsAre looking for a conventional 40-hour workweek Why Join Mental health care in the United States is understaffed and under strain. Therapists are overwhelmed, and the businesses behind them are often run on spreadsheets and guesswork. The company is building the infrastructure that allows psychotherapy practices to scale, see more patients, run healthier businesses, and spend less time on administrative overhead. It is a real, underserved problem, and the work you do will directly affect whether practices can grow and survive. Beyond the mission, you will: • Own meaningful, company-defining product surfaces • Shape both the roadmap and the architecture • Build on an existing product and customer foundation • Build AI-native features tied to real operational outcomes • Help define an agent-native engineering culture • Work directly with the founders