Founding Software Engineer (Backend/Infra)

We are looking for a mission-driven, backend and infrastructure-focused software engineer with 4+ years of professional experience to join Loula as a full-time founding software engineer. This role is perfect for someone who loves building resilient, well-tested systems and is excited about having autonomy and ownership at an early-stage startup. You'll be joining a small team of founding engineers, where you'll not only drive the product forward but also help shape Loula's culture and future.

• Implement software architecture: Design and develop the foundational architecture of Loula's software systems.

• Lead product development: Drive the development of Loula's platform, with a focus on backend systems and infrastructure.

• Define the product roadmap: Collaborate closely with the founding team and Loula customers to draft, develop, and refine a robust product roadmap.

• Talk to customers: Conduct user interviews, shadow users, and implement feedback to continuously improve the product.

• Technical Leadership: Take ownership of a portion of the tech stack and ensure the systems are simple, extensible, and scalable.

• An experienced backend or infrastructure-focused engineer who's built and scaled systems from the ground up, with a track record of improving developer experience for the teams around you. Bonus points if you've worked in startups, worked on early-stage products through launch, led a technical team, and/or worked in digital health before.

• Energized by a user-centric product development approach. You love talking to customers to understand their needs, how they think, and how they use the product to inform the product roadmap.

• Independent and proactive. You are able to work independently and without explicit direction to make well-informed decisions and deploy key projects without sacrificing quality.

• Mission driven. Working with health insurance isn't the most glamorous path, but you are deeply driven by our mission to improve health outcomes for new families by empowering the professionals who care for them. You bring an ownership mentality, collaborative approach, and positivity and optimism to the work.

🛠️ Your Experience

You have 4+ years of software engineering experience, building scalable systems from the ground up. Ideally you've built in the healthcare space before, but we're open to adjacent backgrounds if you're genuinely excited about the space. Specifically, you've:

• Built products from the ground up at early-stage startups, or you've been a member of an early founding team at a startup.

• Spun up microservices and designed PostgreSQL schema to support scalable, evolving systems; experience with NestJS is a big plus.

• Worked across a range of AWS tools (S3, EC2, RDS, and more), with hands-on experience in Docker and Aptible for deployment; extra points if you're excited about maintainability and CD pipelines.

• Built and/or expanded API testing suites and instrumented systems for observability (we like Datadog).

• Prioritized, scoped, and planned new products and features in collaboration with product management, user research, and design teams, and collaborated with sales, operations, and customer success on internal tools and improvements.

💻 Tech Stack

• Frontend: React, Vercel

• Backend: Typescript, NestJS, Drizzle ORM

• CI/CD: Docker/Dockerhub, Github actions

• Database: Postgres

• Hosting provider: AWS, Aptible

• Internal tooling: Retool

💟 Benefits

• $140k+ annual salary

• Generous equity package

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage - FSA & HSA options

• Access to One Medical, Talkiatry, Peloton, Kindbody, and more

• Short & Long term disability insurance, Life insurance

• Unlimited PTO

• Team fun! Dinners, activities, retreats

📍 Location

California or New York preferred but remote is welcome.

Loula is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.