Staff Software Engineer / Tech Lead, ML Infrastructure

About the role

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to act as the technical anchor for a small, focused team working on Data and ML infrastructure. Your work will directly support large-scale machine learning applied to precision healthcare.

This is a highly technical, player-coach role. You will set the architectural vision and guide the day-to-day technical execution of the team, remaining deeply hands-on in the codebase. Whether you are already a seasoned tech lead or a Staff Individual Contributor (IC) ready to step up and guide a sub-team of engineers, this position gives you the platform to lead technically.

Responsibilities

• Act as the technical lead and mentor for a small, high-impact team of engineers, guiding system design, conducting code reviews, and unblocking technical hurdles.
• Write high-performance Python code and utilize frameworks like Ray to architect and maintain large-scale distributed computing platforms for ML training and evaluation.
• Spearhead the deployment of complex ML algorithms into highly available, scalable cloud environments, ensuring models run efficiently in production.
• Design and integrate robust cloud-data systems to manage the lifecycle of massive, unstructured medical datasets.
• Work cross-functionally with researchers and engineers to understand how they develop models, using that understanding to solve their ML training, serving, and production monitoring needs.
• Responsibly and securely utilize AI-powered development tools (like coding assistants or LLMs) to accelerate the team's engineering workflows.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on ML infrastructure, distributed systems, or MLOps.
• A history of mentoring peers and leading technical projects, and an excitement to act as the technical anchor for a small team of engineers.
• Ability to write clear, well-tested, and scalable code, with high proficiency in Python.
• Deep understanding of modern distributed computing architectures and how to optimize heavy compute and cloud-data workloads (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Familiarity with infrastructure as code (e.g., CDK, Terraform).
• Familiarity with modern distributed computing frameworks and table formats like Ray, Kubernetes, and Apache Iceberg.
• Knowledge of cross-language bindings for high-performance computing (e.g., C++/Python).
• Prior experience in the healthcare domain, highly-regulated environments, or handling image-based algorithms is a huge plus.

Qualifications

• Experience with Python and other relevant programming languages.
• Experience with distributed systems and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Experience with ML frameworks and tools (Ray, TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Experience with data management and storage solutions (Apache Iceberg, AWS S3).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation tools.

Skills

• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to break down complex architectural challenges into manageable pieces.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, able to work effectively with a diverse team.
• Experience with healthcare regulations and compliance standards.

Benefits

Heartflow offers a competitive benefits package including health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off.

Pay

Salary Range: $190,000 - $250,000 base, plus cash bonus and equity.

Schedule

This is a full-time position operating on a hybrid schedule out of our San Francisco office.