Cairns Health · 2 hours ago
Senior Manager, Software Engineering
Sunnyvale, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level
7+ years expCairns Health is creating a fundamentally better healthcare experience for people with chronic health conditions. The Senior Manager, Software Engineering will lead a team to build and scale an AI-driven remote care platform, focusing on backend systems and healthcare-grade reliability.
Consumer ElectronicsElder CareHealth CareHome Health Care
Responsibilities
Remain deeply hands-on, contributing production code on a regular basis while leading by example
Own and evolve the architecture and system design of core backend and AI-driven platforms
Design, build, and operate scalable backend services supporting LLM-powered health and wellness applications
Make pragmatic architectural decisions that balance rapid iteration with long-term maintainability and reliability
Lead design reviews, code reviews, and technical discussions, serving as a technical authority for the team
Manage and mentor a team of 3–4 software engineers, fostering growth, accountability, and technical excellence
Act as a player-coach, supporting engineers through hands-on guidance, pairing, and thoughtful feedback
Support hiring, onboarding, and development of future team members as the organization grows
Create a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performance engineering culture
Own team delivery, including planning, execution, quality, and timelines
Translate product and business requirements into clear technical plans and deliverables
Drive adoption of Agile practices and tools, including sprint planning, backlog management, retrospectives, and continuous improvement
Partner closely with product, design, clinical, and operations teams to deliver customer value efficiently
Collaborate across backend, data, AI/LLM, hardware, and firmware teams to deliver integrated solutions
Work within healthcare and regulated environments, contributing to systems that require security, reliability, and compliance
Participate in operational excellence efforts, including monitoring, observability, incident response, and uptime improvements
Qualification
Required
7–10 years of experience as a software engineer, with strong backend and system design expertise
3–5 years of experience managing engineers, ideally in a player-coach or hybrid leadership role
Strong experience designing and operating backend systems using Java (11+), cloud-native architectures, and RESTful APIs
Deep familiarity with AWS and modern cloud infrastructure (containers, orchestration, CI/CD)
Strong understanding of LLM architectures and production AI systems (e.g., RAG, orchestration, scaling, latency considerations)
Experience working with Agile development practices and tools (e.g., Scrum or Kanban, Jira, GitHub, CI/CD pipelines)
Excellent communication skills and the ability to lead through influence, clarity, and technical credibility
A strong affinity for startup culture — comfortable with ambiguity, fast iteration, and high ownership
Preferred
Experience building or operating HIPAA-compliant or other regulated healthcare systems
Exposure to hardware and/or firmware integration, embedded systems, or IoT-style architectures
Prior experience scaling early-stage systems or teams in a startup environment
Familiarity with messaging systems, event-driven architectures, or real-time data pipelines
Benefits
Competitive compensation
Equity & benefits
Medical
Dental
Vision
Paid vacation/sick days
401(k) plans
Company
Cairns Health
Cairns Health is a digital care companion for senior living and home care, integrating ambient sensing, AI, and LLMs to empower patients.
11-50 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageTotal Funding
$5.32MKey Investors
Lightspeed Venture PartnersY Combinator
2017-10-06Seed· $5.2M
2017-08-21Pre Seed· $0.12M
Leadership Team
Andrew Ritter
Chief Executive Officer
Saurabh Gupta
Chief Executive Officer
Recent News
Los Angeles Business Journal
2025-11-11
Company data provided by crunchbase