Engineering Manager, Network Value

Headway's mission is a big one - to build a new mental health care system everyone can access. We've built technology that helps people find great therapists with the first software-enabled national network of providers accepting insurance.

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but the majority of providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway is building a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access by making it easy for therapists to accept insurance and scale their practice.

Headway was founded in 2019. Since then, we've grown into a diverse, national network of over 60,000 mental healthcare providers across all 50 states who run their practice on our software and have served over 1 million patients. We're a Series D company with over $325m in funding from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Accel, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Spark Capital, Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures and Health Care Service Corporation.

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 and Benefits:

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.

We are committed to offering a comprehensive and competitive total rewards package, including robust health and wellness benefits, retirement savings, and meaningful ownership opportunities through equity. Compensation decisions are made holistically, ensuring fairness and alignment with market benchmarks while recognizing individual contributions and potential.

Benefits offered include:

• Equity Compensation
• Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage
• HSA / FSA
• 401K
• Work-from-Home Stipend
• Therapy Reimbursement
• 16-week parental leave for eligible employees
• Carrot Fertility annual reimbursement and membership
• 13 paid holidays each year as well as a Holiday Break during the week between December 25th and December 31st
• Flexible PTO
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Training and professional development