Lead Software Engineer - Front End Rearchitecture

Join us as we work to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

Role Summary: The Lead Member of Technical Staff will serve as a technical anchor for a team building modern, React-based clinical web applications that support healthcare providers and improve patient care delivery. This hybrid role is based in Boston, MA, and combines hands-on engineering with technical leadership — guiding architectural decisions, mentoring team members, and ensuring high standards of quality and consistency across the frontend platform. This position reports to a Principal Member of Technical Staff. 

Team Summary: The Clinicals Front End Rearchitecture Initiative is an engineering-led program aimed at replacing a fragmented set of frontend architectures across Clinicals applications with a single, cohesive, React-based platform. Today, these applications are built on a variety of technologies and patterns that create complexity for developers and inconsistency for users. This initiative is designed to address that directly — establishing a unified foundation that makes it easier to build, maintain, and scale clinical software over time. 

A core part of this effort is modernizing how frontend applications access and consume data. The team is replacing the current home-grown Data Broker with GraphQL, introducing cleaner and more predictable data contracts between the frontend and backend systems. Node.js plays an important role in supporting build tooling, server-side rendering, and lightweight service layers that are integral to the overall frontend architecture. 

Beyond the technical work, this initiative is also about establishing engineering culture and shared practices — reusable component libraries, front-end conventions, testing standards, and documentation that other engineering teams across Clinicals can adopt. As a Lead on this team, this person will help shape those practices and guide other engineers in applying them effectively. The end result will be a performant, developer-friendly, and sustainable platform that positions Clinicals for long-term growth — and this role is central to making that vision a reality. 

Essential Job Responsibilities: 

• Lead the technical design and delivery of frontend features and platform components using JavaScript, React.js, and TypeScript, ensuring alignment with architecture standards. 

• Guide and mentor other frontend engineers on implementation practices, code quality, and shared conventions across the team. 

• Define and evolve frontend architecture patterns, component libraries, and engineering standards that support a scalable, unified codebase. 

• Integrate frontend applications with backend services via GraphQL APIs and RESTful endpoints, establishing consistent data-access patterns. 

• Leverage Node.js to support build tooling, server-side rendering, and frontend-adjacent service development within the platform stack. 

• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and backend engineers to evaluate requirements, shape technical direction, and deliver user-centered solutions. 

• Evaluate and integrate AI-assisted development tools — such as those that support code review, test generation, or debugging — into the team's workflow, and help teammates adopt practices that improve productivity while maintaining code quality and judgment. 

• Drive code review practices, testing standards, and deployment readiness to maintain a high bar for frontend software quality. 

• Analyze existing Clinicals frontend codebases, identify areas for improvement, and lead migration efforts toward the modernized React-based architecture. 

• Coordinate with cross-functional engineering teams to align on shared APIs, data contracts, deployment pipelines, and platform dependencies. 

Additional Job Responsibilities: 

• Support frontend build, release, and deployment activities using Jenkins or Harness continuous integration and delivery pipelines. 

• Collaborate with backend and data engineers on system-level integrations involving Oracle databases or supporting data services. 

• Work with existing utilities or automation scripts written in Perl when integration or tooling requirements call for it. 

• Contribute to cloud-based deployment and hosting activities on AWS (Amazon Web Services), including familiarity with relevant services for frontend infrastructure. 

• Participate in sprint planning, technical roadmap discussions, and engineering capacity estimation. 

• Represent frontend engineering perspectives in cross-team design reviews and architectural planning sessions. 

• Identify and champion opportunities to improve frontend performance, accessibility, and overall developer experience. 

• Support onboarding of new engineers by sharing knowledge of the platform, codebase, and team practices. 

• Help maintain and grow internal documentation for component libraries, architectural decisions, and engineering conventions. 

• Monitor engineering health across the team and surface blockers, risks, or technical debt that may impact delivery. 

Expected Education & Experience: 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. 

• 6 years of professional frontend software development experience, including time spent in a technical leadership or lead engineering role. 

• Deep proficiency in JavaScript and TypeScript in large-scale, production frontend environments. 

• Extensive experience building component-driven web applications using React.js, including state management, performance optimization, and design system integration. 

• Solid working knowledge of Node.js for build tooling, server-side rendering, or frontend-adjacent service development. 

• Hands-on experience with GraphQL for client-side data fetching, API design, and integration with backend services. 

• Exposure to Perl, Oracle, AWS (Amazon Web Services), Jenkins, and/or Harness is preferred. 

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical design, conduct code reviews, and establish engineering standards within a team. 

• Experience working within an Agile software development lifecycle, including sprint planning, retrospectives, and iterative delivery. 

• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly across engineering, product, and design teams in a hybrid work environment. 

Expected Compensation

$143,000 - $243,000

The base salary range shown reflects the full range for this role from minimum to maximum. At athenahealth, base pay depends on multiple factors, including job-related experience, relevant knowledge and skills, how your qualifications compare to others in similar roles, and geographical market rates.  Base pay is only one part of our competitive Total Rewards package - depending on role eligibility, we offer both short and long-term incentives by way of an annual discretionary bonus plan, variable compensation plan, and equity plans.