VP, Engineering

VP, Engineering

at Zócalo Health

Remote (Full Time)

Compensation: $240,000 - $250,000 (per year)

About Us

Zócalo Health is a tech-enabled, community-oriented primary care organization serving people who have historically been underserved by the one-size-fits-all healthcare system. We partner with health plans, providers, and community organizations to deliver culturally competent primary care, behavioral health, and social care.

Our model is built for populations with high medical and social complexity, where fragmented care drives poor outcomes and unnecessary cost. We combine local, community-based teams with virtual care and modern technology to deliver coordinated, whole-person care where members live and receive support.

Founded in 2021, Zócalo Health is backed by leading healthcare and mission-aligned investors and is scaling rapidly across states and populations. We are building a durable care platform designed to perform in constrained healthcare environments and to lead the shift toward accountable, value-based care.

Role Description

The VP, Engineering will join Zócalo Health at a pivotal moment. Following rapid growth and the close of our Series A, we are entering a phase where technology must both catch up to the business and prepare us for accelerated scale. This role exists to do both.

Zócalo Health delivers care in the real world across clinics, communities, homes, and virtual settings, serving high-need populations in value-based arrangements. That reality creates complexity that cannot be solved with generic SaaS patterns alone. We are looking for an engineering leader who is energized by this challenge and motivated to build systems that reliably support care delivery, operations, and growth. This role requires deep empathy for frontline clinical and operational workflows and a willingness to engage directly with the realities of care delivery.

As VP, Engineering, you will lead the engineering organization and own the technical execution and architectural evolution of Zócalo Health's platform. You will shape technical standards, guide system design, and remain close to the work, stepping in hands-on where it matters most. You will partner closely with Product, which owns platform direction, roadmap prioritization, and tradeoff decisions, to translate strategy into scalable, reliable systems. You will also work closely with Clinical and Operations leaders to ensure technology works in practice, not just in theory.

A core expectation of this role is to treat advances in AI as a force multiplier for execution. You will drive the pragmatic adoption of AI-enabled tooling and automation to accelerate development velocity, reduce operational burden, and improve reliability across the organization. This is not about building AI for its own sake, but about helping a lean team move faster and operate better.

This role is for a builder and leader who thrives in ambiguity, exercises strong technical judgment, and is excited to shape the engineering foundation of a company scaling into new markets, populations, and value-based care models.

In your first 12 months, you will:

• Establish a clear technical architecture for care delivery, data, and integrations
• Rebuild or stabilize core systems that are currently limiting scale
• Implement engineering operating cadence (planning, delivery, quality, incident response)
• Build, lead, and develop a small but growing engineering team, scaling it thoughtfully over the next 12 to 24 months while remaining hands-on in architecture, delivery, and critical problem-solving
• Improve development velocity and system reliability measurably
• Create a sustainable on-call and ownership model

This position reports to the Chief Executive Officer and works in close partnership with the VP, Product.

The VP, Engineering will contribute in the following ways:

• Own the technical execution, architecture, and major engineering decisions for Zócalo Health's core platforms supporting care delivery, operations, data, and integrations
• Build, lead, and develop a small but growing engineering team, scaling it thoughtfully over the next 12 to 24 months while remaining hands-on in architecture, delivery, and critical problem-solving
• Partner closely with Product to implement the product roadmap, translating prioritized problems and requirements into scalable, reliable systems
• Leverage advances in AI and automation as force multipliers across engineering workflows, internal tooling, and care operations
• Drive improvements in system reliability, observability, security, and scalability in a regulated healthcare environment
• Make pragmatic decisions around build vs buy, technical debt, and platform evolution to support rapid growth
• Establish engineering standards, development practices, and operating rhythms that balance speed with rigor

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering, including senior technical leadership roles
• Proven experience building and scaling systems in healthcare, care delivery, care management, or similarly complex, regulated environments
• Strong hands-on technical background with the ability to dive deep when needed
• Experience leading engineering teams through periods of rapid growth and ambiguity
• Deep understanding of modern cloud architectures, APIs, data platforms, and integration-heavy systems
• Strong judgment in balancing speed, quality, compliance, and long-term maintainability
• Clear communicator able to partner effectively with technical and non-technical leaders

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience applying AI, automation, or advanced developer tooling to materially improve engineering productivity or operational outcomes
• Experience supporting value-based care, population health, or care coordination models
• Familiarity with healthcare compliance and security requirements (e.g., HIPAA)
• Experience working in tech-enabled services organizations, not just pure SaaS environments

What you can expect from Zócalo Health

• Equity compensation package
• Comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, and vision
• 401k
• Flexible PTO policy - take the time you need to recharge
• $1,000 home office stipend
• We provide the equipment needed for this role.
• Opportunity for rapid career progression with plenty of room for personal growth.

You must be authorized to work in the United States. Remote Work can be done from anywhere in the U.S.

At Zócalo Health Inc., we see diversity and inclusion as a source of strength in transforming healthcare. We believe building trust and innovation are best achieved through diverse perspectives. To us, acceptance and respect are rooted in an understanding that people do not experience things in the same way, including our healthcare system. Individuals seeking employment at Zócalo Health are considered without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Those seeking employment at Zócalo Health are considered without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability status.