Director of Software

Job description

Who We Are At Luna Health, we are driven by a singular mission: to bring the transformative power of insulin automation to the masses. We are a venture-backed medical device startup that aims to make life with insulin-requiring diabetes simpler and safer with innovative hardware and software. Our founders are industry veterans with firsthand experience managing diabetes, for themselves or for their child, and a track record of helping people with intelligent, simple-to-use medical products. We offer a revolutionary approach to nighttime glucose control for people unwilling or unable to use a traditional insulin pump. Part world’s smallest patch pump, part first-of-its-kind closed loop insulin dosing algorithm, our sleep-only automation automatically adjusts insulin doses overnight allowing users to get a good night’s sleep and their start days feeling refreshed and worry-free. The Role We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Director of Software to join our team, reporting to the VP of R&D. This is a builder's leadership role, shaping the output and direction of our software team. Luna has developed a product that has reached clinical studies with a lean, high-performing software team. Now, at a growth inflection point, your charter is to grow the product, the team, and the internal tools into their full commercial form. You’ll build out the software team and create an ecosystem where engineers thrive and do their best work, while diving deep technically to collaborate on new approaches to the product and how it’s developed. This role combines people management, strategic planning, creative problem solving, and driving AI-enabled workflows to deliver the best possible product. Please note that this is an on-site role and you must live within a reasonable commuting distance of the Luna Health site in San Diego, CA. Responsibilities Leadership and People Management Organization: Define and build a software team that scales as the business grows. Establish a hiring process to build strong teams with differentiated roles. Interface with the executive team and board on technology issues. Mentoring: Guide career growth for engineers at every level. Defers to others’ technical authority when appropriate, but engage engineers at a deep level, earning respect as a technical collaborator. Culture: Create a positive, safe, and productive work space where software talent can thrive. Understand the team’s strengths and interests. Drive efficiency constructively, collaboratively, and motivationally. Draw initiative out of talented engineers and champion their ideas. Delivery and Execution Engineering Effectiveness: Drive continuous improvement in how work flows from idea to released code. Reinforce high coding standards and efficient workflows, champion emerging AI tools, and keep the team’s overhead to a minimum so they can focus on building. Prioritization: Ensure the team is working on the right things in the right order, and course-correct when a chosen path encounters trouble. Cross-Team Partnership: Represent software across the org, collaborating and negotiating scope, tradeoffs, and commitments with hardware, data science, regulatory, and executives. Build: Stay technically hands-on where it counts. Prototype, review, and implement alongside the team. Strategy and Planning Translate Vision into Plans: Our leadership is visionary and sets direction at altitude. You're comfortable operating in that ambiguity, translating soft needs and ambitions into actionable strategy and ultimately an elegant product. Technical Path: Develop short-term and long-term technology roadmaps in collaboration with product management and the engineering team. Brainstorm collaboratively with executive leadership at a strategic level on technical ideas. Manage Competing Demands: This is a multifaceted role that will have increasing demands. Bring the resourcefulness, creativity, and organization to ensure the company’s needs are met at any scale. What You Bring This role requires technical depth, leadership instinct, and a bias for building over administering. Education and Experience Degree: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field. Professional Experience: 10–15+ years working in software development, including 5+ years managing technical teams. Regulated Industry: Experience ensuring data integrity, audit trails, and reliability for information that may bear on patient safety and regulatory scrutiny. Prior medical device or other safety-critical software experience is a strong plus. Technical Competencies Architecture: Experience designing and shipping mobile apps and cloud backends end to end, with the judgment to make early architectural choices that hold up as a connected-device fleet grows. Operations: Fluent in modern DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, and automation test frameworks. Strategy: Ability to align multi-year technology roadmaps with core business goals. AI: Familiarity with frontier models, using AI for coding and as an accelerator of productivity. Able to apply safe practices in a regulated environment, ensuring human judgment is ultimately responsible and accountable. Leadership and Soft Skills People Management: Proven ability to lead and grow a small, senior engineering team directly, mentoring individuals, hiring with a high bar, and building a culture people do their best work in. Communication: Track record of clear alignment with your team, effective cross-functional collaboration, and representing software credibly with executive leadership. Execution: Competency owning a team budget, allocating scarce resources, and holding delivery timelines. What We Offer A no-jerk policy - we seek the best and brightest talent who are fun to work with Equity - we are early in this journey and you’ll be instrumental in Luna’s growth Excellent health benefits - we depend on it ourselves as a team that has or cares for people with diabetes What to Expect The first step is to apply for this job on our website. Next, we will schedule a virtual interview with the hiring manager to introduce you to the company and the role. Finally, we will invite you on-site to discuss your experience and meet the team. We are in a hurry to find the right person – not in a hurry to hire – so we will take time getting to know you and making sure that you will be an excellent fit for the work that we are doing. An Equal Opportunity Employer All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability. Physical Demands The physical demands described here represent those that an employee must meet to perform the essential functions of this job successfully. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions. Sit for extended periods of time at a keyboard and mouse Lift and move up to 25lbs Work in a second story office up a flight of stairs Hearing and speaking will be required regularly Specific vision abilities include close and distance vision, depth perception, peripheral vision, and the ability to adjust focus To All Staffing and Recruiting Agencies This posting is only for individuals seeking a job at Luna Health. Only authorized staffing and recruiting agencies may use this site or to submit profiles, applications or resumes on specific job openings. Luna Health does not accept unsolicited resumes or applications from agencies. Please do not forward resumes to Luna Health. Luna Health is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes/applications.