Design Engineer

About Empirical Health

We're building the future of primary care. 99% of your health is defined outside the doctor’s office. Empirical helps you manage it.

Empirical Health is a virtual-first medical service that uses artificial intelligence and health sensors on wearable devices (Apple Watch, Fitbit, Google Pixel, Samsung watch and more) to scale proactive healthcare to everyone. We're building a product that gives every user an AI-powered personal health assistant, backed by a real human doctor who can provide actual diagnosis, treatment, and care.

In this role you will work with our doctors and interact with real patients to build the tools needed to keep them healthy. Do you want to use your software engineering and design skills to save lives and make healthcare better for everyone? At Empirical Health, we're inventing the future of primary care – and we want you.

About the role

From blueprint to breakthrough, Design Engineers are responsible for the core of Empirical Health: our patient-facing mobile app.

Some examples of what you might do:

• Craft an intuitive data visualization to help our patients understand their overall health score (based on a formula created by a doctor), how their health is changing, and what actions have the highest impact in improving their health.
• Design GenAI UI patterns that go beyond chat.
• Launch new features for our mobile app to help improve our AI generated care plans for patients with different conditions such as POTS, hypertension, or sleep apnea.
• Design and build flows that help patients understand tradeoffs in cost and quality between different options (for example, an in-lab sleep apnea testing can cost $3,000 vs $200 for an at-home test).

We expect design engineers to push code to production in the first week and complete a major project that improves the lives of real patients by the end of the first 1-2 months.

This job is in person 5 days a week in New York City (Union Square in Manhattan), but hybrid/remote days can be arranged when necessary.

About you

We’re looking for someone with strong UI engineering skills and an obsession with design to ship real features for our users.

Ideally, you have:

• Strong knowledge of TypeScript or JavaScript and React or React Native.
• A strong desire to make an impact on the healthcare system
• A high level of skill in interaction design, usability, and data visualization.
• Excellence in the basics: simple code, reasonable automated tests, code reviews, clear comments, and quick iteration cycles.
• Strong owner's mindset.

Nice to haves:

• Experience with mobile interface design (e.g., iOS Human Interface Guidelines).
• Exposure to healthcare, bioinformatics, or digital health is helpful, but if you're willing to learn, we're willing to teach.
• Visual design or motion design.

Technologies we work with

• React Native (mobile app), Node.js (server), and TypeScript (both)
• PostgreSQL (database)
• Swift and Kotlin (native modules in iOS and Android)

Why work with us

• We ship—we don’t do year-long projects that are outdated before they’re even finished. We ship incrementally, so that we’re constantly testing whether our product direction resonates with real users.
• Our work has deep impact. We directly help people–often with serious illnesses like Long Covid or heart disease–live healthier lives. We’re focused on real patient care, not the back office.
• We’re small, on purpose. We’re a team of 4 people, even though we’ve raised enough capital to hire more. We believe a small team with high agency and skill can accomplish great things.
• Experienced founding team. Our founders include a UC San Francisco Assistant Professor and a serial entrepreneur who scaled their previous startup to 10 million users.
• Wear multiple hats. We believe the boundaries between design, product, and engineering are porous and flexible, and we embrace people who are interdisciplinary.