Senior Software Engineer (Trust Foundations - Identity and Platform)

Senior Software Engineer (Trust Foundations - Identity and Platform)

Headway's mission is a big one to build a new mental health care system everyone can access. We've built technology that helps people find great therapists with the first software-enabled national network of providers accepting insurance.

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but the majority of providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway is building a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access by making it easy for therapists to accept insurance and scale their practice.

Headway was founded in 2019. Since then, we've grown into a diverse, national network of over 45,000 mental healthcare providers across all 50 states who run their practice on our software and have served over 1 million patients. We're a Series D company with over $325m in funding from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Accel, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Spark Capital, Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures and Health Care Service Corporation.

We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

About This Role

Building for trust is non-negotiable in our mission of making mental healthcare more accessible and affordable across the US : patients share sensitive information, payers demand demonstrably strong controls, and providers depend on reliable, secure infrastructure.

Trust Foundations is responsible for instilling confidence in our products by safeguarding our user's data. We achieve this by developing out-of-the-box identity, access, and secure-data platforms for other engineering teams to utilize. Our mission is to make the most secure path the most efficient path, enabling clinicians, patients, and payers to trust Headway implicitly.

As a Senior Software Engineer on our Trust Foundations team, you'll write production code every day while shaping the long-term vision for trust at Headway. You will translate open standards - OAuth 2.0 / OIDC, RBAC / ABAC, envelope encryption - into scalable building blocks; embed privacy-by-design and reliability principles into everything we build; and mentor engineers across the company in Trust first thinking.

What You'll Do Here :

• Design, build, and operate core trust primitives - authentication providers, authorization engines, stratified encrypted data stores, and tamper-evident telemetry.
• Embed security & privacy by design - Codify guardrails in linting rules and CI, and partner with Legal / Compliance to translate regulatory language into concrete engineering controls.
• Scale our identity rails - Design and evolve multi-tenant authentication & authorization services that handle millions of sessions daily with high availability expectations.
• Deliver scalable, secure platform foundations - Build shared services that embed security-by-default (least-privilege access, encryption in transit and at rest, audit hooks) and expose intuitive APIs so product teams can move quickly without compromising trust.
• Turn ambiguous requirements into incremental delivery plans - Lead architecture reviews; break large problems into testable milestones; and make pragmatic build-vs-buy decisions in a regulated domain.
• Champion operational excellence - Instrument services, tune alerting, own on-call runbooks, and drive post-incident hardening.
• Elevate engineering culture - Mentor teammates, document patterns, and help recruit the next generation of Headway engineers.

What Will Make You Successful In This Role :

Deep expertise in one of two focus areas :

About Engineering At Headway

Building a new mental healthcare system at Headway is only possible because of the scale and leverage that software can provide. The engineering team at Headway is a small but mighty team using technology to build that future (and have a fun time while doing it!).

Principles That Guide Us :

Tools We Use :

Our Interview Process

After you apply to Headway, here are some details of what to expect during the interview process.

Compensation and Benefits :

The expected base pay range for this position is $164,900 - $233,000, based on a variety of factors including qualifications, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for performance-based variable compensation and an equity grant, depending on the position and level.

We are committed to offering a comprehensive and competitive total rewards package, including robust health and wellness benefits, retirement savings, and meaningful ownership opportunities through equity. Compensation decisions are made holistically, ensuring fairness and alignment with market benchmarks while recognizing individual contributions and potential.

Benefits offered include :