VP of Engineering

Tiny Health is advancing lifelong health, from the first 1,000 days to the last, and addressing chronic disease through precision microbiome science. Founded in 2020 and built by microbiome scientists and physicians, our testing platform reveals whether your microbiome is trending toward resilience or imbalances using shotgun metagenomics, proprietary AI, and one of the world's largest longitudinal datasets. Trusted by families and health practitioners alike, our research-backed gut and vaginal tests are redefining the microbiome as a cornerstone of personalized health through every life stage. Learn more at tinyhealth.com and poweredbytiny.com.

As our first VP of Engineering, you will own engineering at Tiny Health end to end. Our team of roughly a dozen engineers works across two pods and has grown without a dedicated leader, with ownership over technical direction, architecture, hiring, and people management currently fragmented between various people. You will bring all of that under one roof: lead the people, set and ship a clear technical and architecture strategy, and stand up the performance and growth systems a maturing engineering org needs.

We are looking for a hands-on leader who is as comfortable in the codebase as in a 1:1, someone who can earn the trust of senior engineers, develop them into the tech leads we do not yet have, and represent engineering at the executive table. You will be the sole voice for engineering among business and product leaders, partnering closely with product and company leadership to get the right architecture and scaling work prioritized and delivered. You must be able to deliver highly technical information in lay business terms, communicating risk, reward and impact effectively to non-technical audiences. This role reports directly to our co-founder and Chief Growth Officer.

• Become the terminal owner of engineering. Resolve technical and people decisions by convening the right people and acting on a strong point of view, rather than routing decisions upward.

• Build an engineering performance system that measures real individual impact beyond ticket volume, accounting for quality, reliability, and the non-project work people absorb, and use it to surface and act on both your strongest and your struggling engineers.

• Set and continuously evolve the architecture and scaling strategy, informed by product and executive context, and use your influence to get that work onto pod roadmaps and shipped, so every pod is executing against a shared technical vision.

• Represent engineering at executive tables. Keep executive stakeholders and colleagues informed of decisions within engineering and product that have downstream impacts across marketing, business development, operations and partnerships. Be able to collaborate effectively cross-departmentally.

• Build the team: find where the gaps are, hire people who hold the bar, give every engineer a clear growth path, develop existing engineers into tech leads, and make sure each pod is resourced to deliver its roadmap.

• Have directly managed and led engineers, including running 1:1s, performance, and individual growth.

• Operate as a hands-on builder who still writes and reviews code and works directly in the system, not a pure people-leader.

• Can engage senior engineers on architecture and scaling tradeoffs at their depth and earn their respect.

• Experience serving as the sole voice for engineering among business and product leaders. Take a clear, bold position in the best interest of both engineering and the company, command the tradeoffs, and move the room through reasoning rather than authority.

• Have run an engineering org or team of comparable size (roughly 10 to 12 engineers).

• Have scaled a team from a single- or two-pod structure into a larger org with tech leads and engineering managers.

• A track record of developing engineers and leveling existing talent up into senior or lead roles.

• Have personally sourced, closed, and onboarded engineers who became A-players.

• Experience in a healthcare, HIPAA, or SOC 2 compliant environment.

• Structure messy, ambiguous data into a conclusion you can defend.

• A mission that actually pulls people in
  We make the microbiome measurable and actionable at every life stage, and real people write in to say it's life-changing.

• Remote-first, real overlap
  Our FTEs are based in North America and work core hours from 9am–6pm CST, shiftable by up to two hours either way — start at 7am or 11am, wrap at 4pm or 8pm.

• Written first, huddle second, meet last
  Default to a clear Slack post, huddle when a thread stalls, and meet only to make a real decision.

• Fast, but never sloppy
  Do the two-month thing in two weeks, then check the work—shipping errors is rework, not speed.

• Shape what we build, not just how we build it
  There's no playbook waiting for you, so write it—and bring the alternative, not just the objection.

• Day One mentality
  Fewer titles and layers; process is a guardrail where it counts, never the reason something didn't ship.

• No hidden agendas
  Numbers, misses, and feedback are shared openly and in real time, so you always know where you stand.

• High standards, genuinely fun people
  Take the work seriously and ourselves much less—high-performing and fun to be around is the hiring bar.

• Is this pace for you?
  Venture-scaled and on a steep trajectory, with intensity in spikes, fiercely protected flexibility, and faster growth than anywhere else.

1. Learn Fast, Get Better - Find the root cause, not just the fix, and get better every time

2. Be Relentlessly Resourceful - Dig for the answer, move fast, and know when to ask for help

3. Act Like an Owner, Be Hungry to Win - Act like it’s your company, and do whatever it takes to win

4. Act with Honesty and Empathy - Say what’s true, and say it with care

5. Delight People by Anticipating Their Needs - Solve the problem, then get two steps ahead of it