Head of Engineering

Join ThinkMD and Help Shape the Future of Global Healthcare

Head of Engineering | Full-Time | Remote | Australia

ThinkMD is a high-growth, AI-native health and data company on a mission to defeat global healthcare inequity by building scalable, clinically validated, AI-powered solutions. Currently supporting around 25,000 individual clinical assessments per week across countries like Zambia, Rwanda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, PNG and Cambodia, ThinkMD is rapidly scaling to transform healthcare access across the Global South and beyond. Backed by world-class venture firms and global health leaders, we’re commercialising the future of digital health by partnering with governments, non-profits, private healthcare providers, pharmaceuticals, and telecom companies.

To lead this next phase of technical execution and scale, we’re seeking a Head of Engineering to lead the growth of the internal and external technical capacity of our company.

What you’ll do

The Head of Engineering will lead ThinkMD’s software and data design, development, and support, under the CTO. They will head the Engineering Department and own the development operations (DevOps) infrastructure, end-to-end software development lifecycle and associated methodology, engineering standards and practices, architecture and design, data engineering, quality assurance, release management, and team management.

This role blends leadership with hands-on development and operational support, matching our lean team structure. The Head of Engineering will align application and data architecture and design, software delivery, and DevOps with broader company strategy and scaling requirements. They will work closely with IT, product, clinical, and commercial teams to translate market needs into software and data platforms built to current best practices and compliant to regulatory requirements. In addition to software and data platforms, they will directly develop and continuously improve foundational DevOps infrastructure, and the engineering team’s standards, capabilities, and culture.

Key responsibilities:

Software and Data

• Architecture, design, implementation, testing, and release of scalable application and data platforms aligned with product vision and business strategy.
• Integrate contextually resilient architecture and design aligned with best practices of implementation within the Global South, including offline-first and device agnostic considerations.
• Embed application and data telemetry to enhance visibility and contextual awareness of live systems.
• Define and maintain the three-level data model architecture (conceptual, logical, physical).
• Oversee data pipelines, APIs, visualisations, and system integrations to ensure secure, reliable, and performant information flow and usage.

Development Operations

• Manage and continuously improve CI/CD pipelines for repeatable and efficient software delivery.
• Manage and continuously improve IaC capabilities for automated creation and configuration of infrastructure.
• Manage and administer code repositories and branching strategies to ensure effective collaboration, version control, and governance.
• Drive continuous improvement, repeatability, and reliability through automation coupled with manual approval procedures.
• Drive continual improvement in containerisation and orchestration practices.

Leadership and Management

• Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing engineering team, including both permanent and outsourced staff.
• Set, maintain, and continuously improve engineering standards and strategies that produce high-quality, on-time, and user-accepted software and data outcomes.
• Oversee resource planning and vendor partnerships across software and data development to ensure effective delivery and cost efficiency.
• Maintain a servant leadership philosophy to prioritise team member growth and organisational success.
• Manage engineering team performance evaluations and continuous learning and development opportunities.

Research and Development

• Lead technical discovery, analysis, and feasibility studies for new technology opportunities aligned to product vision.
• Maintain awareness of emerging technologies, tools, and frameworks relevant to business strategy.
• Continuously improve the application and data platforms through technology innovation and experimentation in conjunction with technical debt reduction.

Quality Assurance

• Define and embed the engineering test strategy, with consideration for medical device regulatory requirements (data sovereignty, data privacy, SaMD, ISO, etc) and Global South context.
• Select, integrate, and administer test management tooling to create E2E auditability through the SDLC.
• Set, maintain, and continuously improve testing standards and strategies that produce high-quality, on-time, and user-accepted software and data outcomes.
• Oversee the release management process and associated documentation, including oversight of all testing gates.
• Embed test-driven development (TDD) into the SDLC methodology and engineering team.

Operational Support

• Oversee application and data platform support, ensuring timely issue resolution and root-cause analysis.
• Select, integrate, and administer incident management tooling to ensure appropriate internal collaboration and external stakeholder management.
• Define and monitor key metrics for defects, and create action plans to continuously reduce defect rate and time to resolution.
• Drive improvements in post-release monitoring and knowledge-base documentation.
• Define and adhere to SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and SLOs (Service Level Objectives).
• Provide technical knowledge to support commercial pre-sales or strategic partnership opportunities.

Compliance, Risk and Security

• Align application and data platform development and engineering team ways of working to company policies and procedures.
• Ensure compliance with healthcare regulations including HIPAA, GDPR, and other regional data protection requirements.
• Ensure adherence with engineering standards including ISO 27001 and SaMD.
• Embed security-by-design and privacy-by-default principles throughout the SDLC.
• Partner with the IT team on vulnerability management, access control, and audit logging.
• Contribute to technology risk assessments and mitigation strategies across application and data platforms.
• Lead technical preparation and response for internal or external audits and testing.

Culture and Continuous Improvement

• Champion and exemplify a growth mindset and a culture of continuous improvement, ownership, and accountability across engineering.
• Promote psychological safety, transparency, and collaboration within and between teams.
• Maintain recurring retrospectives, post-incident reviews, and root-cause analysis for learning and development.

What you'll bring

Education & Experience

Educational background:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field (Master's preferred).

Professional experience:

• Extensive experience in technology team leadership, architecture and design, development operations, application development, regulatory compliance, and data platform development.
• Proven track record of engineering large-scale application and data platforms capable of serving millions of concurrent users.
• Experience in API development and system-integration, especially with EHRs/EMRs.
• Experience in medTech preferred.
• Experience in Global South preferred.

Technical skills:

• Expert knowledge of JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, SASS/SCSS, and associated frameworks.
• Expert knowledge of DevOps: CSP, CI/CD, IaC, automation, containerisation, versioning.
• Strong knowledge of application and data architecture and design.
• Strong knowledge of test management and strategies.
• Strong knowledge of interoperability and system integration, especially with respect to healthcare frameworks and standards.
• Strong knowledge of data modelling, data warehousing, data pipelines, visualisation, and APIs.
• Proficiency in SDLC methodologies and associated practices.
• Proficiency in modern programming languages and software development practices.
• Experience with cloud services and cybersecurity technologies.

Special Requirements:

• Applicants must be a current resident of Australia.
• Applicants must undergo police check.