Staff Engineer

We're looking for a Staff Engineer to set the technical direction for Hesta's platform as we scale.

About Hesta Health

Hesta is creating a new benchmark in women’s health, delivering exceptional care at every life stage. As we advance towards this goal, we are committed to closing the women’s health gap, beginning with pregnancy and postnatal as our initial focus. 75 million years of women’s lives are lost every year due to poor health or early death. This gap limits potential, drives inequality, and reflects a healthcare system that wasn’t built for women. We are changing that.

The Opportunity

This is a role for a senior technologist who can design scalable systems and shape architecture at a company level as we grow. You’ll balance hands‑on coding with driving initiatives that cut across the whole platform - from clinical data systems to AI-enabled care features. You’ll work closely with our founders, product and clinical teams, and you’ll have real influence over how Hesta scales as we grow from pre‑seed into our next phase. We’re applying the latest in AI to build something that genuinely changes lives for women and families. We want to make this the best it can possibly be, and to do that we need passionate, motivated engineers who care about the craft as much as the mission. You’ll be working alongside people who’ve done this before across both tech and healthcare, and who are committed to getting it right. If you want your work to truly matter, come build with us.

What You’ll Do

• Architect and lead design for high-scale, multi‑tenant systems that handle sensitive clinical data
• Set standards for engineering quality, testing, security and reliability across the platform
• Own cross‑cutting technical initiatives that span multiple areas of the product
• Build tools, frameworks and abstractions that improve developer velocity
• Partner with founders and the wider team to align engineering execution with company strategy
• Design and maintain data‑compliant systems with privacy, security and regulatory standards embedded by default (UK GDPR, NHS DSPT, MHRA guidance)
• Champion clinical‑grade reliability, data integrity and patient trust in everything you build

Who You Are

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years as a technical lead or staff‑level engineer
• Proven success scaling systems to meet growing demand, ideally in a regulated or data‑sensitive environment
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence technical direction without formal authority
• Comfortable owning systems: You’re happy taking responsibility for a codebase and keeping it healthy - from shipping features to debugging issues.
• Backend experience with Node.js and/or Python (FastAPI, Flask)
• Experience with front end frameworks (React, Next.js, Typescript). Exposure to cross platform frameworks a plus (e.g. React Native).
• Experience deploying and operating systems on at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure), with containerisation (Docker; Kubernetes a bonus)
• You’ve built or worked on systems where data protection, access control, and auditability matter
• Product‑minded: You think in terms of user outcomes and trade‑offs, not just technical solutions. You care deeply about the user and collaborate closely with design and product
• Healthcare fluent: You understand (or are eager to learn) the constraints of clinical workflows, data privacy (e.g. UK GDPR, NHS standards), and safety
• AI‑curious: You’re excited about the opportunities that AI brings, and want a chance to move up the curve quickly and impactfully. You have experience working with LLMs such as Claude or similar, including prompt design, evaluation, and workflow orchestration. You are absorbing the rapidly‑changing environment and want to be on the forefront of the change.
• Startup‑ready: You’re resourceful, thrive in ambiguity, and know how to move fast without breaking trust
• Mission‑aligned: You’re excited about using technology to improve healthcare, particularly for women and families.

What Success Looks Like in This Role

• You’ve reviewed Hesta's system architecture end to end and have a clear view of where the risks and bottlenecks sit
• You’ve shipped a meaningful architectural improvement in a high‑leverage area, such as scaling a core service or strengthening how clinical data is stored and accessed
• You’ve set (and documented) standards for code quality, testing and security that the team can build on as it grows
• You’re a trusted technical voice with the founders, regularly flagging risks, dependencies and opportunities before they become problems
• You’ve introduced at least one new tool, pattern or practice that makes the codebase easier to work in
• You’re comfortable being the person who owns the hard calls on architecture, with no one to defer to

What This Role Is (and Isn’t)

This role is:

• A chance to set technical direction for a healthcare platform from an early stage
• A collaborative role working closely with founders and clinical teams
• A chance to shape how Hesta scales as it grows

This role is not:

• A purely hands‑off architecture role - you'll still be writing code
• A large engineering team environment (yet)

We strongly encourage applications from people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, parents, carers, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. If there’s anything we can do to accommodate your specific situation, please let us know.

Company Benefits

• You’re joining a winning team. (Founders have worked at: Airbnb, Babylon, NHS, Oxford, UCL)
• A unique opportunity to join a startup at the beginning and help build the backbone of a healthcare service designed specifically for women.
• Join a small, mission‑driven team where your contributions have immediate impact.
• A close working relationship with, and mentorship from, our experienced co‑founders and technical advisers
• Competitive salary and equity options - we’re building this together
• Flexible, hybrid, working; our team work is based on the job that needs to be done, not office face time
• Office facilities: Spacious working space, with other innovators in Victoria, bike storage, changing facilities and a healthy supply of tea/coffee
• 25 days annual leave a year + public holidays