Engineering Manager - Network Value

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access. We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work - credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation - is a nightmare. We've automated that.

But we're going further. Over 90,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 2.6 million patients. We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale, and building much of it with AI. We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens.

We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

About engineering at Headway

Building a new mental healthcare system at Headway is only possible because of the scale and leverage that software can provide. The engineering team at Headway is a small but mighty team using technology to build that future (and have a fun time while doing it!).

Principles that guide us:

• Focus on the mission: We view software as a means of effecting change in the world, not as an end unto itself. We write software to empower our patients and therapists to better solve the problems they're facing.

• Ship small, learn fast: We are building new and novel products and believe that we learn what our users need by quickly shipping and iterating.

• Everything is a product: Whether it's our patient search experience or a developer productivity improvement, we treat everything we build at Headway as a product with end-users in mind.

• Optimize for trust: We believe that engineers should be continually learning. To learn effectively and to be productive, engineers must feel safe asking questions and discussing mistakes.

Tools we use:

• Languages: Python 3, TypeScript

• Libraries & Frameworks: FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, React, Remix, Next.js

• Datastores: Postgres, Redis

• Infrastructure: AWS (Fargate, ECS, S3, SageMaker and more), Spark and Kafka

• Monitoring: Datadog, PagerDuty, Sentry

• Version Control: Github

• Vulnerability Management: Snyk, Semgrep

• Cloud Security: Lacework

About this role

Headway's mission is to build a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access. We have built the largest insurance-based therapy network in the country, and the insurers paying for it are now asking two fair questions: is it working, and is it worth it? Network Value is the team that answers the second one.

At the risk of oversimplifying it, you could describe the problem as one shoe, one size, one price. Sessions differ enormously in what they involve and in how much they help, and yet they are largely paid for as though they were the same thing. That is not carelessness on anyone's part. Patients, providers and insurers have all been working without the data that would let them be more specific, and producing that data honestly is genuinely hard.

As Engineering Manager for Network Value, you'll lead the team closing that gap: understanding our patients and our providers far better than we do today, using that to match them well, and turning the result into evidence an insurer will accept. The nuance is the job. The differences that matter are real but subtle, and being crude about them has consequences for providers' livelihoods and patients' care.

You'll grow and mentor a team of roughly five to eight engineers, set the roadmap for the pod, and work closely with Product, Clinical, Data, and the people who sit across the table from payers.

Get this right and the same money buys better care. Get it crudely wrong and we either keep paying for care that did not help, or we penalise providers who were doing the right thing all along. Holding both of those at once is the real difficulty of the role, and the reason it needs a strong leader.

Who you are

We're looking for an engineering leader who is product-minded, data-informed, and energized by growth. You'll work closely with Engineering Leadership, Product, Clinical, and Data to shape the future of Headway's payer strategy. There is an unusually direct line from your team's work to the rates we can defend, and to whether this model of care survives contact with the market.

In this role you will

• Lead, manage, and grow the Network Value engineering team

• Own delivery on externally-committed launches and metrics, including their guardrails

• Set the technical and operational roadmap across segmentation, provider efficiency ranking, and subnetworks

• Develop your team through weekly 1:1s, mentorship, and direct feedback, and grow a tech-lead layer beneath you

• Partner closely with Product, Clinical, Data Science, and Commercial to iterate quickly and rigorously

• Contribute to the broader group and company strategy, not just your own roadmap

Experience we're seeking

• 3+ years of engineering management experience at a high-growth startup or scale-up

• 4+ years of experience as a software engineer, enough to hold technical direction credibly

• A track record of building and leading high-performing teams that delivered business outcomes through technical investment

• A strong product mindset and cross-functional relationships that build trust with users and stakeholders

• Experience owning an externally-committed metric or launch date, with the scope discipline that requires

• Comfort with data- and ML-heavy systems: measurement, experimentation, and metric guardrails

• Nice to have: healthcare, insurance, or another regulated, high-trust domain

• Nice to have: value-based care, utilization management, cost-of-care analytics, or marketplace ranking

• Nice to have: prior experience with Python, React, and AWS infrastructure

You'll love this role if you want to

• Lead the team that decides whether a new model of mental healthcare can be shown to be worth it, not just described

• Own launches and numbers the company commits to externally, with the autonomy that comes with it

• Build a tech-lead layer beneath you rather than inherit a finished team

Our interview process

After you apply to Headway, here are some details of what to expect during the interview process.

• Initial screen: You'll connect with someone in recruiting so you can learn more about the team, Headway's mission and exciting growth, and we can get a better idea of your background.

• First rounds: You'll meet with an engineering leader on the team to go deeper into your team and people leadership experience. You'll also complete an AI Coding round — a collaborative session where we're less focused on syntax and more on how you think through problems and work with AI tools in a technical context.

• Final rounds: You'll meet team members across product and engineering leadership for multiple behavioral interviews and one more technical interview (System Design), leaving you with a fuller picture of what it's like to work at Headway.

• References and the Offer: Our favorite part of the process! We'll send over all of the details, including specifics on employee equity, and congratulatory messages from excited future team members!

Compensation:

The expected base pay range for this position is $222,800 - 278,500, based on a variety of factors including qualifications, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for an equity grant, depending on the position and level.

Comprehensive benefits:

Medical, dental, vision, HSA/FSA, 401(k) including match for 2027!, Carrot Fertility reimbursement, and paid parental, medical and caregiver leave.

We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview.

Headway participates in E-Verify. To learn more, click here.

A notice to Headway applicants: To protect yourself against phishing and recruitment fraud, please note that Headway only accepts applications through our official careers page at https://headway.co/careers. Headway will never refer you to external websites, ask for payment or personal information, or conduct interviews via messaging apps. All official communication will come from a @findheadway.com email address. If you are contacted by someone claiming to be from Headway via an unofficial channel, please do not share any information and report it as spam.