VP of Engineering

At MedScout, our mission is to empower MedTech commercial teams with the data, insights, and tools they need to deliver life-changing medical innovations to the patients who need them most. We’re creating a best-in-class revenue acceleration platform that unites the latest medical claims intelligence with an intuitive user experience built specifically for sales professionals at medical device and diagnostic companies.

We’ve raised $22.8m from incredible investors, and we’re looking for the next member of our senior leadership team. If you’re a proven early-stage engineering leader who’s passionate about the craft of building software, pushing the boundaries of AI adoption, and building a product that drives outsized outcomes for our customers, this could be a great role for you.

How will you help us build MedScout?

1. You’ll own technical people development at MedScout.

   1. Maintain policies and processes for hiring/recruiting, firing, performance assessment/management, compensation, career development, and retention for technical employees.

      1. Hold 1-1’s with every technical team member to keep a pulse on the overall organization and ensure we’re building a world-class technical culture.

   2. Provide functional guidance and investment criteria development for building and/or formalizing functions like DevOps, internal infrastructure, partnership maintenance/ownership, RFP response, security investment, and Design.

      1. Criteria could include new headcount, buy vs. build, vendor selection, contractors, onshore vs. offshore, etc.

2. You’ll ensure we can deliver our near, medium, and long-term roadmap with high quality and on predictable timelines.

   1. Build an overall view of the alignment of technology commitments and resource allocation to company goals. Responsible for understanding when in-flight commitments become at risk and working with the team leaders to take action.

      1. Collaborate with team leaders to advocate and make room in the schedule for resource allocation and prioritization of technical debt and infrastructure improvements to improve performance, reliability, and/or scalability while balancing business objectives.

   2. Hones the processes used for scoping, prioritizing, and allocating resources against the technical delivery of features, infrastructure improvements, and other important technical efforts at MedScout as needed. Effectively, you’ll help guide the improvements to our Operating System(s) based on best practices, your experience, and MedScout’s current needs. We’ve recently adopted Shape Up, and are seeing solid results.

   3. Helps define the “APIs” between our Product, Engineering, Data, Application, and Customer-facing teams. Diagnoses when things aren’t working effectively and works with the respective team leaders to implement improvements.

   4. Works with team leaders to develop a cohesive picture of current state of Data, Application, and other technical functions. Takes this context and the company’s near-, medium-, and long-term goals, then builds the plan with the CEO and team leaders on how we will address gaps across resources, processes, and/or expertise to achieve these goals. Presents a holistic view of this to the MedScout BOD.

   5. Helps “build the technology picture” and guides technical due diligence for any future acquisition or financing event.

   6. *Please note that while we maintain SOC 2 compliance, we do not have to be HIPAA compliant. All of our claims data is de-identified.

3. You’ll be the technical P&L owner.

   1. Takes budget, knowledge of the current team, individual performance, and input from team leaders to maintain and execute technical hiring plan and budget.

   2. Reviews actuals vs. budget monthly and adjusts our forecasts across people, COGS, and other technical expense line items.

      1. Regularly works with technical team leaders on their toolset, current spend, and plans so that we can forecast and make changes when necessary.

   3. Helps diligence additional 3rd party integrations or PaaS vendors with respective team leaders to develop a high-level understanding of how we’d integrate them into the platform and how that’d impact COGS/other expense areas.

What does an ideal background look like?

• You have managed teams and built platforms that heavily incorporate third-party data/integrations, have an AI/ML component, and treat mobile as a first-class citizen.

• You have strong opinions on the impact of AI on the development and product lifecyle.

• You have demonstrated impact at a successful Series A-C B2B startup

• You have scaled technical teams from 0-10 people to 40+

• You have owned technical budgeting and board material preparation + interaction

• You have participated in a venture equity raise or sell process

How will we evaluate you?

We believe in transparency at MedScout and want to give everyone the opportunity to put their best foot forward. As such, we wanted to share with you how we will be evaluating you throughout the interview process, as well as once you’re on the team. As you are meeting with our team, we will be asking ourselves these questions about your experience.

• People

  • Hiring effectiveness and retention - are we hiring (and keeping) the right people?

  • Direct report evaluation - does your team enjoy working for you?

• Process

  • MedScout Leadership team alignment and feedback - are you/your team collaborating effectively across the organization?

  • Are we consistently meeting or exceeding our Product and Technology goals and delivering value to customers?

• Plans

  • Are we staying within our budget?

  • Are we effectively communicating how R&D will support the next phase of growth at MedScout to the Board and potential investors or strategic partners?

Are we a fit for each other?

At our stage, we believe how you operate is more important than what you’ll do day-to-day. As an early team member, we’re looking for individuals with strong alignment with the following core values

• Effort on our inputs: We prepare diligently, leave it all on the "field", and move on quickly. Focusing on good habits and work ethic, not individual outcomes, ultimately creates a winning culture and a successful company.

• Earn Trust: We keep our commitments to our customers, partners, and each other. We listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. We strive to demonstrate empathy, inclusion, and intellectual honesty.

• Intelligence Drives Operations: We learn continuously and have the humility to quickly recognize when our assumptions are wrong so we can readjust accordingly.

• “Top Right” is the Expectation: We hire and reward driven, innately curious individuals who work hard to gain a deep understanding of our market, their craft, and the outcomes we strive to deliver for our partners.

What can you expect from us?

• A market-competitive salary.

• An incredible equity package. You're going to feel like an owner of this company.

• Fully covered healthcare, 50% coverage for dependents, and a great vision, dental and other employees resources.

• A great 401K option with a $1500 match.

• Stipends for your office, health and wellness and education that will allow you to continue to grow as an individual.

• You will feel heard. You will hear, "Yes, let's do that!" and then have the opportunity to execute your ideas successfully.

• Remote first culture and twice yearly on-sites with the rest of the entire MedScout Team as well as smaller department meeting throughout the year.

• We stay in nice hotels and eat well when we travel for work. No one feels like a badass walking into a Quality Inn.

MedScout embraces diversity and equal opportunity in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We believe the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation who need it. We want you to be able to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. If you require any accommodation please let us know!

What is the interview process?

1. Intro call with the CEO where we can get to know each other, pattern match to your experience, and have an opportunity for you to get more information. You won't have to prep anything for this call.

2. Deeper dive interview with advisor Scott Mitchell, Andrew Janatka (Head of Product, and CEO. We’ll want to dig into your tenets for technical leadership and building great products. We’d also love to hear your perspective on what’s changed over the past 18-24 months and if/how AI has enabled you to “get back to building” in any material way.

3. Technical Screen. We’d like to hear about a project that you were involved in/led recently. Our Backend and Data Lead would love to learn about the problem space, system design, technologies considered, key decisions made, and lessons learned along the way. Preferably, this project would involve data ingestion, manipulation, and insights generation. You can use diagrams if needed, but we’re aiming to keep this conversational and collaborative.

4. “How do you build with AI session?”. We’ll take a simple prompt and build some working software in an hour. You’ll be “thinking out loud” with our most advanced AI adopters in the org. We’re not judging WHAT you build as much as HOW you build and communicate.

5. Presentation to the Leadership team. We’ll assess your aptitude using previous work samples and your alignment with our core values (prompt below).

6. One-hour call with the entire Engineering team. We’d love for you to talk through your scale-up experience most similar to MedScout. They’ll want to know what went well, what didn’t, what you learned, etc. We’ll also leave some time for open dialogue and Q&A. Hopefully, you can re-use content from the Leadership presentation. This will build trust within the team and give you a better picture of who you will be working with. While we’ll take the team's feedback into consideration, they won’t have veto power.

7. 3 Reference Calls for the CEO. We expect to hear great things, so this is mainly to understand how to work best with you and your fit for the role.

8. Offer components presented to you in writing (we can talk about ranges beforehand). We can review the offer structure and answer any questions or concerns you may have asynchronously or live, whichever you prefer.

9. Formal offer presented for your consideration.

Leadership Presentation prompt

At a high level, we'd like to assess your ability to drive outcomes in four main areas. While we talk, the team will rate our confidence on the below.

1. Do we feel confident that this person can build a world-class technical culture at MedScout by leading/developing our existing team members and bringing on new team members when appropriate?

2. Do we feel confident that this person can implement and execute a platform development cycle that helps us deliver value to customers consistently, with quality, and at the pace necessary to hit our aggressive goals?

3. Do we feel confident that this person will collaborate effectively and earn trust across the organization and with our customers to ensure we're 1) building the right things in the right way and 2) delivering value to our customers as a team?

4. Do we feel confident that this person can effectively communicate how R&D will support the next phase of growth at MedScout to the Board and potential investors or strategic partners?

I'd encourage you to use the time to tell us stories. We want to hear about the "earned" experiences that map to these functional areas, and that shaped how you lead teams. At a high level, a flow might look like a story/experience, your takeaways/lessons, and how that informed your principles/operating system(s).

We'll schedule an hour and thirty minutes to be safe. In the past, we've spent around an 45 minutes to an hour discussing the materials, 15 minutes on follow-up questions, and then 15 minutes for you to ask some questions of the leadership group as well.