Founding Engineer
Parakeet Health
Other Engineering
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 150k-220k / year + Equity
Posted on Mar 26, 2025
Senior Full Stack Engineer (In-Office)
Who We Are
About Parakeet Health
“Due to increased call volume, wait times are longer than usual” - Every phone call, every time of day
Have you ever called your doctor’s office for yourself or a loved one and were put on hold for 10 minutes? It disrupts your day and is a huge waste of time.
Today, medical call centers are staffed with 25 to 200+ people making and answering calls all day long. Despite this massive investment, they only answer calls from 8 am -5 pm and patients still have to wait on hold during peak times.
Parakeet Health is on a mission to enable more affordable, effective, and enjoyable care by automating repetitive healthcare administrative tasks — starting with phone calls and texting. We’re building an AI patient engagement platform that enables patients and medical practices to communicate easily while reducing admin costs. Our conversational AI call center agent uses LLMs to automate repetitive admin tasks like appointment scheduling, patient outreach, and referral management through calls and texts 24/7.
We are venture backed by top-tier VCs including Canvas Ventures (investors in Doximity, Superhuman, Upwork), CoFound Partners, and StoryHouse Ventures. Our angels include the founder and former CEO of One Medical, former CTO of Twitter, and co-founder of Tend Dental.
About the Founding Team
We are a team of seasoned healthcare industry veterans (One Medical IPO, Doximity IPO, Epocrates IPO) and engineers (Microsoft, Twitter, Rippling, Primer AI). Our customers include national primary care practices operating in all 50 states as well as regional multi-specialty and urgent care health systems which care for 100,000+ underserved lives.
Healthcare is very hard. To win in healthcare, a traditionally slow-moving field, one must deeply understand healthcare workflows and know the right people to gain trust. With decades of experience in healthcare operations and AI, we have a deep network of friends and colleagues in this space which has accelerated customer acquisition.
In the news:
Fierce Healthcare: Parakeet Health expands AI call center, announces $3M seed round
Healthcare Innovation: ‘LLM-Native’ Startup Parakeet Bringing AI to Physician Practice Call Centers
The Role
We're seeking a driven Senior Full Stack Software Engineer with a passion for AI, healthcare, and building 0 to 1 products. We have a robust pipeline of clients and an ambitious, customer-validated roadmap that we want to build out quickly. As the third engineer, you'll be instrumental in shaping the product and developing our AI agent and patient communication platform. You will:
Build and expand our voice and LLM stack to enable fast and natural conversations
Develop new communication modalities to allow customers to engage with their provider whichever way they prefer — phone, text, carrier pigeon (maybe)
Build a reusable yet customizable agent platform to enable fast customer onboarding
Build integrations with new electronic medical records (EMR) systems
Participate in customer calls to understand challenges of healthcare practices deeply and make decisions on how best to solve them
Work in an ambiguous environment and set your own tasks based on larger goals and understanding of customer needs
Who Should and Shouldn’t Apply
Being an early engineer at a startup isn’t for everyone. It’s a different type of role with big risks, lots of work, but outsized, fulfilling rewards with a ton of ownership and impact.
You should apply if…
You want to be shipping, experimenting, and solving customer problems instead of sitting in meetings discussing.
You’re scrappy and get stuff done. If you’re testing noise reduction you might test it at the cafe downstairs. You get out of the lab and into the real-world.
You care deeply about the quality of the product you build. You get annoyed when a button is slightly off-centered or a system is slow.
You’ve tackled projects with a lot of technical and product ambiguity and owned it. You thrive in this environment and get excited that you can define what the solution looks like.
You like to join customer calls and hear what customers are saying about their problems and what you’ve built.
You are ambitious and don’t shy away from big challenges like fixing healthcare. You say “Challenge accepted” when faced with hard problems.
You shouldn’t apply if…
You have never taken ownership of a project before. You’re used to working with an engineering manager or Product Manager that gives very detailed instructions or Jira tickets on what to build.
You need a very detailed roadmap 3 years out and get annoyed if it’s not stuck to. We shoot for a north star but are constantly adapting and validating with customers and data. Agility is our advantage.
You have a big ego. You’ve never said “You might have a point here, I may be wrong”. We’re humble and we speak to people with respect even when we debate and disagree. Disagreement is good. We challenge each other to think differently and steel man the argument.
You want to manage people. We’re all do-ers and we hire senior people who are self-starters and mostly autonomous.
You want to work on exciting work all the time. There’s going to be mundane tasks that still need to get done. No matter your seniority, everyone will rotate through those.
Company Values
High Agency
Take ownership and get stuff done. See something wrong, fix it. Builders don’t wait or expect someone else will fix it.
Craftsmanship
Sweat the details, delight users, and be proud of everything you ship. Leave things better than you found it. You don’t push the world forward doing an “okay” job. You need to do phenomenal work. Quality is not a plus; it's a must-have.
No ego
It's okay to admit you don't know something and ask for help — it's a sign of strength, not weakness. Always assume positive intent. We communicate in a kind, direct, and transparent way.
Curious
Always ask why and question how things can be better. Seek to understand the problem and the user needs.
Engineering Culture
We believe that engineers who deeply understand the customer and the business often come up with the best product ideas because they have a strong understanding of the technologies underlying a product and what’s possible. This allows them to identify opportunities for innovation that may not be apparent to others at the company or by the customer.
Interview Process
We move quickly and will get back to you with a decision on next steps within 48 hours after each round. This process can be as fast as 2 weeks.
30 minute intro call: understanding your background and what drives you
1 hour technical interview: problem solve through an evolving technical problem (nothing too leet code-y)
On-site interview or paid work trial in San Francisco: work on an actual feature we plan on shipping to get a sense of what it’s like working here
Reference Checks
Offer
Requirements
5+ years relevant work experience
Proven experience in designing and implementing scalable, robust backend systems.
Expertise in Python, Django, React, and/or Javascript is preferred but not required
Previous experience at a Series A or B startup is a plus.
Compensation
$150K-$220K plus generous equity
Benefits and Perks
Excellent health, dental, and vision insurance
Free illy espresso, coffee, and beer
Curated snacks (ask about our snack cabinet)
Fitness stipend
Commuter benefits
Unlimited PTO
401(k)
Our Office (aka The Nest)
This role is in-person at our office in Downtown San Francisco by Montgomery BART. After 4 years of remote work, we’re tired of Zoom meetings all day and it's hard to disconnect sometimes. We enjoy the company of each other and being in the same space allows us to brainstorm more easily, whiteboard, and have fun while doing it. We believe culture is very important and it's hard to build with a remote team.
We have a ton of whiteboards, 2 dome tents (see back right in pic below), and gourmet snacks.
How to Apply
Send your resume to jobs@parakeethealth.com and include a for extra credit