Staff Software Engineer (Product Engineering)

Our healthcare system is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S. Every year, over 50 million Americans suffer adverse financial consequences as a result of seeking care, from lower credit scores to garnished wages. The challenge is only getting worse, as high deductible health plans are the fastest growing plan design in the U.S.

Cedar’s mission is to leverage data science, smart product design and personalization to make healthcare more affordable and accessible. Today, healthcare providers still engage with its consumers in a “one-size-fits-all” approach; and Cedar is excited to leverage consumer best practices to deliver a superior experience.

The Role:

This isn’t your typical Staff Engineer role. As a Rover in Cedar’s Product Engineering Organization, you’ll move between squads to tackle the most complex, high leverage engineering challenges—wherever they emerge.

The Kinds of Problems You’ll Solve:

Other Rover Staff Engineers at Cedar have successfully advocated for and implemented broad changes to improve our overall system architecture. One such project was the Communications Platform Overhaul:

• A current Rover Staff Engineer led a full redesign of our patient communication scheduling system.
The legacy architecture was brittle: single-process, resource-heavy, and difficult to extend safely.

• The new event-based design introduced Kafka and Flink, improving resilience, scalability, and support for personalized outreach.

• This initiative set the blueprint for Cedar’s broader move toward event-driven architecture across the org.

As you get familiar with the Product Engineering systems, you will help identify opportunities for large-scale improvements to high-impact systems like the above project. One potential upcoming project you could likely focus on would be to Lead the Evolution of Patient Assistance:

• This is an opportunity to improve how we connect with millions of patients and lead the modernization of our core chat platform, moving from a legacy system to a more flexible, AI-ready solution.

• You’ll own the selection and integration of a new platform that enhances our current capabilities and prepares us for more personalized and assistive patient experiences.

• This project spans multiple teams and directly impacts Cedar’s long-term product vision and technical architecture.

Why This Role Matters:

Cedar’s ability to reach and support patients—at scale and with empathy—hinges on the technical foundation of the Patient Pillar.

You’ll take on hard, high-stakes problems, such as real-time communication and personalized decisioning, working with sensitive financial and medical data. These aren’t solved problems—they require creativity, precision, and systems thinking.

You Will Also:

• Lead cross-squad technical strategy and unblock high-priority initiatives.

• Mentor engineers at all levels through coaching, feedback, and collaborative problem-solving.

• Shape org-wide architecture through forums such as the Architectural Steering Group.

• Contribute hands-on code approximately 60% of the time—this is a deeply technical role, not a hands-off Staff+ position.

• Influence Cedar’s engineering culture by bringing your experience with things like testing patterns, code review practices, scalable team workflows, best practices for GraphQL, etc.

Who You Are:

• You have 9+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong track record of building and scaling production systems.

• You’ve led major technical projects that cut across teams, functions, and layers of the stack—and you know how to drive alignment without needing to be the loudest voice in the room.

• You take deep ownership of business-critical systems. You understand what it means to build for performance, supportability, and long-term evolution.

• You know how to debug complex, cross-system issues and design for observability and resilience up front.

• You’re a mentor and multiplier—you make other engineers better through guidance, partnership, and code/design review.

• You’re comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-changing environments and can facilitate clarity and focus on complex requirements.

• You can translate deep technical thinking into clear, persuasive communication—whether you're talking to engineers, execs, or cross-functional peers.

• You care about the “why,” not just the “how.” You want to build software that makes a difference for real people navigating healthcare.

Compensation Range and Benefits:

• Salary/Hourly Rate Range*: $216,750 - $280,000

• This role is equity eligible

• This role offers a competitive benefits and wellness package

*Subject to location, experience, and education

#LI-Remote #LI-JJ2

What do we offer to the ideal candidate?

• A chance to improve the U.S. healthcare system at a high-growth company! Our leading healthcare financial platform is scaling rapidly, helping millions of patients per year

• Unless stated otherwise, most roles have flexibility to work from home or in the office, depending on what works best for you

• For exempt employees: Unlimited PTO for vacation, sick and mental health days–we encourage everyone to take at least 20 days of vacation per year to ensure dedicated time to spend with loved ones, explore, rest and recharge

• 16 weeks paid parental leave with health benefits for all parents, plus flexible re-entry schedules for returning to work

• Diversity initiatives that encourage Cedarians to bring their whole selves to work, including three employee resource groups: be@cedar (for BIPOC-identifying Cedarians and their allies), Pridecones (for LGBTQIA+ Cedarians and their allies) and Cedar Women+ (for female-identifying Cedarians)

• Competitive pay, equity (for qualifying roles), and health benefits, including fertility & adoption assistance, that start on the first of the month following your start date (or on your start date if your start date coincides with the first of the month)

• Cedar matches 100% of your 401(k) contributions, up to 3% of your annual compensation

• Access to hands-on mentorship, employee and management coaching, and a team discretionary budget for learning and development resources to help you grow both professionally and personally

About us

Cedar was co-founded by Florian Otto and Arel Lidow in 2016 after a negative medical billing experience inspired them to help improve our healthcare system. With a commitment to solving billing and patient experience issues, Cedar has become a leading healthcare technology company fueled by remarkable growth. "Over the past several years, we've raised more than $350 million in funding & have the active support of Thrive and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

As of November 2024, Cedar is engaging with 26 million patients annually and is on target to process $3.5 billion in patient payments annually. Cedar partners with more than 55 leading healthcare providers and payers including Highmark Inc., Allegheny Health Network, Novant Health, Allina Health and Providence.