Founding Head of Engineering and AI

About the role

Total Life is a national behavioral health telehealth platform for adults later in life, offering therapy through a network of 200+ licensed clinicians and billing Original Medicare Part B directly. It is growing quickly and is looking for a founding Head of Engineering and AI in Vancouver, working in office or hybrid. This is not a distant CTO role: the person writes production code every week, sets the technical vision, works directly with leadership on the strategic roadmap and owns the architecture of AI-first systems.

Key responsibilities

• Write, review and ship code across the stack, taking the company's native platform to the next level
• Design and scale AI systems running in real clinical and operational workflows, such as the AI companion that schedules appointments, sends medication reminders and coaches CBT exercises
• Co-own the strategic roadmap, including build-vs-buy decisions, sequencing, platform bets and the long-term vision
• Champion product design and customer experience for older adult patients
• Build features that drive acquisition, activation, retention and session completion, and integrate marketing technology (attribution, CRM, messaging, conversion funnels)
• Lead payer and eligibility integrations (including CMS HETS 270/271), interoperability and senior-living integrations
• Keep HIPAA compliance, security, uptime and data integrity strong as the company grows
• Set the engineering culture, manage in-house and contract developers and hire the team for Series A and beyond

Required profile

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including meaningful time as a technical leader (CTO, VP Engineering, founding engineer or head of engineering) at a startup or high-growth company
• Still an active hands-on coder who enjoys shipping
• Experience shipping AI and LLM-powered products in production, including agentic workflows, voice or conversational AI and retrieval systems
• Track record of building systems from zero to one and scaling them through rapid growth
• Able to translate business strategy into technical execution and communicate with the CEO, clinicians, partners and investors

Required skills

• Deep experience with modern backend systems, cloud infrastructure and API design
• Go is a strong plus; fluency in modern frontend frameworks is a plus
• Huge pluses: healthcare technology (EHRs, telehealth, HIPAA, HL7/FHIR, payer integrations, eligibility and claims), marketing technology and growth infrastructure, and experience building for older adults or caregivers

What we offer

• A competitive salary and significant equity in a company at an inflection point
• A seat at the leadership table and a direct line to the CEO
• The chance to build the platform that defines tech-enabled care for aging adults

To apply, send your resume and a few sentences about something you've built that you're proud of and why this role excites you; links to GitHub, shipped products or portfolio work are encouraged.