The OpportunityEQL Tech is partnering with PhormAI to hire its first engineer. PhormAI is building Darwin, a Physical AI platform for Health & Wellness that turns multimodal sensor data - wearables, video, IMU, ECG - into clinical-grade insight through agentic AI. It's not a prototype: Darwin is live with paying customers in two distinct verticals today - equine cardiac monitoring (animal health) and tele-ICU intelligence across multiple hospitals (human health) - with the architecture built to extend into further verticals by swapping domain ontologies rather than rebuilding the stack.You'd be employee #1 on engineering - the person who builds and owns the infrastructure everything else sits on. You report to Trisha Dwivedi, PhormAI's Founder & Chief of Data Science (previously led data science at AliveCor, including work supporting FDA clearance of the Kardia 12L device), and you work directly with all three founders on architecture and technical strategy.The RoleYou own the technical foundation of the product: data and model pipelines, cloud infrastructure, developer tooling, and the application layer built on top of it.Data pipelines - build the systems that ingest, process, and transform data for the models.Cloud infrastructure - stand up and operate compute, storage, networking, and deployment from scratch.Orchestration - connect ingestion, training, inference, evaluation, and serving into one coherent pipeline.Operational foundations - establish CI/CD, monitoring, logging, and alerting from the ground up.Application layer - contribute to the APIs, services, and user-facing surfaces built on top of the platform.Technical strategy - make foundational architecture decisions directly with the founders.RequirementsWhat You'll NeedWe're not hiring for years of experience - we're hiring for people who've actually built and shipped end-to-end systems and can reason about a stack from first principles. If you've done the following in production, not just in a course or a side project, you're in range:Strong Python and SQL.Built and operated a production data pipeline (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or similar).Worked hands-on with a cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure) - provisioning, IAM, networking.Shipped with Docker, and either Kubernetes or a managed container platform.Infrastructure-as-code in production (Terraform, Pulumi, or CDK) - you provision, you don't just click around a console.Designed and operated a backend API (REST, GraphQL, or gRPC) including auth.Used an AI coding tool (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or similar) as part of your actual workflow.A track record of debugging across a stack you didn't fully build yourself.Would help, not required:Relational database design and query optimization at scale.Real-time streaming (Kafka, Pub/Sub, Kinesis, Flink).Health, clinical, or regulated-data experience - genuinely not a gate; most of this team came from outside health.Full-stack product experience - you've shipped a user-facing web app end to end.Open-source contributions.BenefitsCompensation & EquityBase salary: up to ~$150,000, paired with a strong, early equity grant - as PhormAI's first engineering hire, you're getting in at founding-level ownership, before the cap table fills in behind you. Exact base and equity percentage confirmed directly with the founders during the process.Why This OneYou're not the fifth infra hire cleaning up someone else's decisions - you're making them.The product already has paying customers in two verticals; you're not evangelizing a concept, you're scaling one that's proven.Small, high-trust team. No legacy debt to inherit.
The Opportunity
EQL Tech is partnering with PhormAI to hire its first engineer. PhormAI is building Darwin, a Physical AI platform for Health & Wellness that turns multimodal sensor data - wearables, video, IMU, ECG - into clinical-grade insight through agentic AI. It's not a prototype: Darwin is live with paying customers in two distinct verticals today - equine cardiac monitoring (animal health) and tele-ICU intelligence across multiple hospitals (human health) - with the architecture built to extend into further verticals by swapping domain ontologies rather than rebuilding the stack.
You'd be employee #1 on engineering - the person who builds and owns the infrastructure everything else sits on. You report to Trisha Dwivedi, PhormAI's Founder & Chief of Data Science (previously led data science at AliveCor, including work supporting FDA clearance of the Kardia 12L device), and you work directly with all three founders on architecture and technical strategy.
The Role
You own the technical foundation of the product: data and model pipelines, cloud infrastructure, developer tooling, and the application layer built on top of it.
- Data pipelines - build the systems that ingest, process, and transform data for the models.
- Cloud infrastructure - stand up and operate compute, storage, networking, and deployment from scratch.
- Orchestration - connect ingestion, training, inference, evaluation, and serving into one coherent pipeline.
- Operational foundations - establish CI/CD, monitoring, logging, and alerting from the ground up.
- Application layer - contribute to the APIs, services, and user-facing surfaces built on top of the platform.
- Technical strategy - make foundational architecture decisions directly with the founders.
Requirements
What You'll Need
We're not hiring for years of experience - we're hiring for people who've actually built and shipped end-to-end systems and can reason about a stack from first principles. If you've done the following in production, not just in a course or a side project, you're in range:
- Strong Python and SQL.
- Built and operated a production data pipeline (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or similar).
- Worked hands-on with a cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure) - provisioning, IAM, networking.
- Shipped with Docker, and either Kubernetes or a managed container platform.
- Infrastructure-as-code in production (Terraform, Pulumi, or CDK) - you provision, you don't just click around a console.
- Designed and operated a backend API (REST, GraphQL, or gRPC) including auth.
- Used an AI coding tool (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or similar) as part of your actual workflow.
- A track record of debugging across a stack you didn't fully build yourself.
Would help, not required:
- Relational database design and query optimization at scale.
- Real-time streaming (Kafka, Pub/Sub, Kinesis, Flink).
- Health, clinical, or regulated-data experience - genuinely not a gate; most of this team came from outside health.
- Full-stack product experience - you've shipped a user-facing web app end to end.
- Open-source contributions.
Benefits
Compensation & Equity
- Base salary: up to ~$150,000, paired with a strong, early equity grant - as PhormAI's first engineering hire, you're getting in at founding-level ownership, before the cap table fills in behind you. Exact base and equity percentage confirmed directly with the founders during the process.
- Why This One
- You're not the fifth infra hire cleaning up someone else's decisions - you're making them.
- The product already has paying customers in two verticals; you're not evangelizing a concept, you're scaling one that's proven.
- Small, high-trust team. No legacy debt to inherit.
Sales & Engineering professionals: unlock your potential with roles perfect for you.The AI hiring market is evolving fast, and the right opportunity can take your career to the next level.At EQL Tech, we connect the top 1% of Sales, GTM & Engineering talent with the most ambitious and innovative AI-native early-stage startups and rapidly scaling tech powerhouses.Your next step starts here. Let’s make it count.
Sales & Engineering professionals: unlock your potential with roles perfect for you.
The AI hiring market is evolving fast, and the right opportunity can take your career to the next level.
At EQL Tech, we connect the top 1% of Sales, GTM & Engineering talent with the most ambitious and innovative AI-native early-stage startups and rapidly scaling tech powerhouses.
Your next step starts here. Let’s make it count.
