Founding Product Engineer

Job description

FOUNDING PRODUCT ENGINEER Location: New York City (Hybrid, 3 days in office per week) Reports to: CTO Kinstead is building the AI-native operating system for independent healthcare, enabling nurse practitioners to launch and run their own clinics. We replace the fragmented, manual infrastructure behind healthcare with a single, intelligent system so clinicians can spend their time on care, not paperwork. This creates a new model of care, one where clinicians practice on their terms and patients get consistent, community-rooted care. We’re backed by Wisdom Ventures, Roo Capital, and leaders from PathAI, Pomelo Care, and Flatiron Health on our mission to deliver better care. ABOUT THE ROLE We're hiring a founding product engineer to own the user-facing experience of our platform. You'll work closely with the CTO, founders, designers, and clinical stakeholders to turn complex clinical and operational workflows into software that feels simple, reliable, and intuitive. This isn't a role where product requirements are handed to you in finished form. You'll help discover the right solution alongside clinicians and designers, make thoughtful product and technical tradeoffs, and build features from idea to production. You'll own the frontend, but not in isolation. You'll influence API design, data models, and overall architecture to make the entire product feel cohesive. We expect engineers to think beyond components and pages, thinking about how the entire product should behave. This role is a great fit if you enjoy turning messy real-world workflows into polished software, making product decisions, and building alongside customers. It is probably not the right role if you prefer narrowly scoped implementation work or highly specified roadmaps. HOW WE WORK We use AI coding tools such as Claude Code and Codex every day. We expect every engineer to be comfortable incorporating AI into their development workflow. AI accelerates implementation, but engineers remain responsible for system design, debugging, code review, and everything that reaches production. We care far more about engineering judgment than lines of code. Great engineers know when to trust AI, when to question it, and ultimately take responsibility for what ships. WHAT YOU’LL OWN - Own major clinician-facing workflows from whiteboard to production, including implementation, testing, rollout, and iteration - Help define product behavior alongside designers, founders, and clinicians rather than waiting for finished specifications - Drive frontend architecture and technical direction across the provider and patient applications - Work side-by-side with our product designer to iterate quickly from rough concepts to polished production experiences. - Work comfortably across the frontend/backend boundary, influencing APIs, data models, and system behavior where it improves the product - Debug complex production issues that span browsers, APIs, third-party integrations, and infrastructure - Help shape our engineering culture through thoughtful code reviews, technical discussions, and pragmatic decision making. OUR STACK Next.js, TypeScript, shadcn/ui, Python (Django, async-first), PostgreSQL, and integrations using Twilio, AWS, GCP, OpenAI and Medplum. Our services run on Vercel, AWS, and Kubernetes, and we rely on Terraform for IaC and Datadog for APM and infrastructure monitoring. We work in a monorepo and maintain automated testing and deployment pipelines using Github Actions. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE Within your first year, you'll: - Become the person the team relies on for the frontend and overall product experience. - Ship clinician-facing workflows that providers use every day and continually improve them based on real customer feedback - Build frontend foundations that make the rest of the engineering team faster, more consistent, and more confident shipping product - Work comfortably across design, frontend, backend, and infrastructure to solve customer problems end to end - Be someone the team trusts with ambiguous, high-impact projects where there isn't an obvious right answer REQUIREMENTS - Demonstrated experience leading significant technical initiatives or owning major product areas - Strong experience with React and Next.js - Experience owning user-facing features from concept through production - Comfortable collaborating across the frontend/backend boundary, including working with APIs and debugging backend behavior when needed - Experience collaborating directly with designers, customers, or domain experts to shape product direction - Strong product intuition, engineering judgment, and debugging skills - Comfortable working in a fast-moving startup environment - Comfortable using AI development tools while maintaining ownership of the systems you build - Ability to commute to Kinstead's Columbus Circle office 3x per week NICE TO HAVE - Experience with healthcare, FHIR, or other regulated software - Experience as an early or founding engineer at a startup - Experience building products used throughout the workday where usability and workflow matter as much as correctness - Experience working closely with designers to evolve a design system over time WHAT IT'S LIKE TO WORK WITH US We’re building something ambitious, and we care deeply about how we show up while we do it. 🤝 We stay close to clinicians We spend time with the people we serve, in their practices and in their communities. The best ideas come from understanding their reality and building alongside them. ⚡ We take responsibility and move things forward If something matters, we don’t wait for perfect clarity. We step in, make progress, and figure it out together. 🧩 We turn what works into something that lasts We solve problems in real time, then step back and build the systems that make it easier for the next clinician. 🤖 We use AI thoughtfully We look for ways to reduce manual work so clinicians can focus on care. If something feels repetitive, we treat it as an opportunity to improve how we operate. 🌱 We care about building something meaningful We’re here to help clinicians create independent, community-rooted practices. That responsibility shapes how we make decisions and how we grow. 💛 We are kind, direct, and low ego We support each other, give honest feedback, and focus on getting to the right answer. We take the work seriously, but not ourselves. BENEFITS - Competitive salary and generous, early-stage equity (4-year grant) - Health, vision, and dental benefits - 401(k) - Unlimited PTO - Prime office in Columbus Circle with free daily team lunches - Fun team events and offsites At Kinstead, we’re building infrastructure for healthcare that serves entire communities—not just a narrow slice of them. That requires a team with diverse perspectives, lived experiences, and ways of thinking. We are committed to hiring people from a wide range of backgrounds, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, national origin, religion, disability, and veteran status. We believe better teams build better systems—and better systems lead to better care. We aim to pay competitively for our stage and the importance of the work. Compensation includes base salary, meaningful equity, and benefits, and is designed to align long-term incentives with the impact you’ll have at Kinstead. In accordance with applicable laws, we provide a reasonable estimate of the salary range for this role. Final compensation will depend on a number of factors, including experience, skillset, and leveling, as well as internal equity considerations. For this role, the estimated base salary range is $180,000 – $220,000, with most candidates falling somewhere in the middle.