Senior Data Engineer

Description

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access. We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work - credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation - is a nightmare. We've automated that.

But we're going further. Over 90,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 2.6 million patients. We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale, and building much of it with AI. We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens.

We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission. 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 the Data Engineering Team

Headway is looking for a Senior Data Engineer to help bring us closer to our mission: creating access to affordable, quality mental healthcare across the United States.

The Data Engineering team builds and maintains the infrastructure that makes this possible. We partner closely with stakeholders across the company - including Finance, Insurance Systems, Analytics, Product, and Data Science - to ensure that Headway's data platform is scalable, reliable, and secure. As AI tools become a primary way Headway employees interact with our data, we're also thinking carefully about what it means to make that data trustworthy, well-documented, and AI-ready.

As a Senior Data Engineer, you'll help shape the future of our data architecture. You'll work cross-functionally to design and implement robust data pipelines, define and uphold data governance standards, and ensure our platform is built to meet the growing needs of the business.

In this role, you will:

Design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines and infrastructure to support internal stakeholders and core business functions

Define, develop, and refine data governance, monitoring, and quality standards across the company — including ensuring that data generated or surfaced by AI tools is complete, correct, and traceable

Identify and lead platform projects that enable better self-service and standardization across teams and pods, reducing bottlenecks and empowering stakeholders to get the data they need on their own

Partner with Product and Engineering to advocate for best practices in data engineering and ensure data needs are addressed early in the product lifecycle

Work cross-functionally with Analytics, Data Science, and Infrastructure to continuously evolve Headway's data architecture

Own and drive technical decisions across the data platform, contributing to everything from performance optimization to infrastructure-as-code

Find practical ways to leverage AI in data engineering workflows, and help shape how Headway employees interact with our data through AI-powered tools, ensuring the underlying data layer is reliable enough to power accurate, trustworthy answers

Responsibilities

• 6+ years of experience as a data engineer, with a track record of building scalable systems and solving complex data problems in a fast-paced tech environment
• Proficiency in Python and SQL
• Experience with tools and services that encompass a modern data platform stack, such as Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, Fivetran, and Terraform
• Familiarity with visualization tools like Metabase or Jupyter Notebooks is a plus!
• A forward-thinking approach to AI, with hands-on experience using it to improve your own workflows and a clear-eyed sense of what’s feasible today versus what isn’t yet
• A pragmatic approach to building for both today’s needs and tomorrow’s scale
• A strong sense of ownership and a bias toward action, especially in the face of ambiguity
• Empathy for your teammates and stakeholders, and a collaborative mindset that values working across disciplines
• Passion for Headway’s mission to make mental healthcare more accessible and affordable
• Comprehensive benefits:
• Medical, dental, vision, HSA/FSA, 401(k) including match for 2027!, Carrot Fertility reimbursement, and paid parental, medical and caregiver leave.
• A notice to Headway applicants: To protect yourself against phishing and recruitment fraud, please note that Headway only accepts applications through our official careers page at https://headway.co/careers . Headway will never refer you to external websites, ask for payment or personal information, or conduct interviews via messaging apps. All official communication will come from a @ findheadway.com email address. If you are contacted by someone claiming to be from Headway via an unofficial channel, please do not share any information and report it as spam.