Principal Engineer
vitalize careMillbrae (CA)
About the role
About Vitalize
Our Vision:
- Unlock Healthcare's Full Capacity
- Health systems still run critical operations like staffing, labor planning, and capacity on spreadsheets, phone calls, and guesswork.
- Vitalize is building the AI operating system for how health systems manage labor and capacity. The impact is real: we save hospitals millions in unnecessary labor spend, give clinical leaders back 10-20 hours every week, and are often the reason staff and leaders stay.
- We're trusted by leading health systems across the country and have raised more than $31M from top healthcare and technology investors, including our own customers.
Our Values:
We hire and grow everyone against the same four values. Each one comes from a real Vitalize story-interview with us to hear them! Push the Car. Step in regardless of role. We help wherever we're needed, own problems end to end, and don't stay in our lane. People can count on us. Premier 1K. We show up for our customers, always. Nearly everyone visits a customer site in their first month, and customer feedback informs everything we do. Run Towards the Ugly. Name the ugliest truth first, then propose the fix. Candor over comfort-we call out what's broken, and never get complacent. This shapes our craft. Think Bigger Fridays. See the gap, fill it-no permission required. Every decision is an experiment: we run it, let the results decide, and drive real impact from day one. About Vitalize's Engineering TeamEvery recommendation Vitalize makes flows through this team. We build the intelligence that helps hospitals decide who should float, when to call someone in, when staffing is becoming unsafe, and eventually when the system can safely make those decisions on its own. This is where Vitalize evolves from software that reports what's happening into software that actively runs hospital operations.
The Role:
Clinical leaders make hundreds of staffing decisions every day under time pressure using disconnected systems. We're replacing that with software that reasons through the problem, recommends, and eventually executes the best next actions. You'll own the decision engine behind those recommendations, turning messy operational reality into software customers trust with some of the most important decisions inside a hospital.
What You'll Do:
- Design and build the decision logic behind staffing recommendations, alerts, and workflows
- Own systems that balance staffing rules, hospital policies, patient needs, and operational constraints
- Partner with our Product Managers, Designers, and other Engineers to build complex software solutions that are easy for our customers to use
- Work directly with clinical leaders to understand how staffing decisions are made
- Build software that explains why it reached a recommendation so users can trust, validate, or override itDefine where automation ends and human judgment begins, helping Vitalize safely automate more hospital operations over time
- Continuously improve the system using customer feedback, production data, and real-world outcomes
- What You'll Bring
- Technical expertise-You have expertise with TypeScriptProblem-solving instinct-You instinctively dive into the why
- Full-stack experience-You have experience working across the entire tech stack
- Systems thinking-You can reason through complicated edge cases
- Customer orientation-You're comfortable working directly with customers to understand problems and rapidly improve the product
- Ownership and communication-You communicate clearly and take strong ownership of your work
- Our StackBunTypeScriptEffectReactTanStack RouterPlanetScaleBenefitsMedical, dental, and vision insurance 401(k) with company match
- Flexible PTOUnlimited travel budget to visit customer sites
- Twice-yearly company off-sites
- Free meals in the office$5,000 relocation bonus for eligible employees
- Desk setup reimbursement
- Commuter benefits
- Monthly gym/wellness stipend
- An awesome office in Jackson Square, steps from the water
Before you apply
Applying takes about a minute. These four things decide how fast it moves after that.
Your profile is current
It's what we read first. Occupations, seniority and locations matter more than a long history.
Two examples you can talk through
Not a portfolio — just two pieces of work where you can explain the decisions and what you'd change.
A number in mind
What you're on now and what would make you move. We negotiate better when we know both.
Your notice period
Employers plan around it, and it's the question that stalls offers most often.
Once you apply, someone reads it and calls you before anything reaches the employer — usually within two working days.