VP of Engineering

Department: Product & Engineering

Location: San Francisco

Employment Type: FullTime

About Condor

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars are invested to discover and develop new therapies, yet the financial infrastructure behind that work has not kept pace. Clinical operations and finance live in disconnected worlds, forcing teams to make high-stakes decisions using fragmented tools and static data.

Condor exists to change that. We are a system of action, building the financial intelligence layer that will power the next era of clinical development. Condor connects clinical operations, vendor activity, and financial signals into a single, real-time intelligence layer, giving R&D and finance leaders true command over how their organizations operate.

Condor is pharma-native, AI-driven infrastructure built to scale industry standards we helped define with Big 4 partners. It powers prediction, control, and execution across the most complex R&D environments in the world.

Why This Matters Now

Condor has moved past proving the concept. Enterprise teams already trust Condor to run critical operations and finance. The work ahead is the hardest part: scaling something people depend on when the stakes are this high.

Condor is a high-growth company backed by top institutional partners like Felicis and 645 Ventures, growing rapidly with Top 200 biopharma companies. This is a rare opportunity to help build foundational infrastructure that will shape how new therapies reach patients.

Role Overview

The VP of Engineering at Condor is a foundational leadership role, responsible for building the engineering operating system behind a platform that customers will increasingly treat as mission-critical. This is not a “keep the lights on” role. It is about shaping how Condor ships with speed and rigor, scaling reliability, security, and quality while the product moves from early enterprise traction to becoming indispensable.

As Condor’s engineering leader, you will partner closely with the CEO and cross-functional leadership to translate company priorities into an execution plan the team can ship against—while also directly contributing in the ways early-stage leadership requires. You will be equally comfortable debugging production issues, making architecture calls, and building a team and process that can scale beyond you.

This role is for an engineering leader who wants real ownership, real influence, and the chance to build a durable engineering function at a critical inflection point.

Key Responsibilities

Build and Own the Engineering Operating System

• Establish a pragmatic, high-signal software development lifecycle: planning cadence, lightweight specs, code review norms, testing discipline, release management, and incident response (built for speed, not bureaucracy).

• Define and own engineering KPIs (delivery predictability, quality, uptime, incident SLAs, cycle time) and create clear visibility for leadership and the team.

• Create an execution model that reliably turns roadmap commitments into shipped product—tight feedback loops, clear ownership, and crisp prioritization.

Scale a Platform Customers Can Trust

• Lead architecture and technical strategy for a regulated, high-stakes environment: reliability, auditability, data integrity, and security-by-default.

• Build operational excellence: on-call, observability, performance tuning, and stability work that keeps enterprise customers confident as usage and data volumes grow. (A “platform teams depend on” bar—like 24/7 operations and high uptime expectations.)

• Drive a culture of quality and resilience: prevent regressions, reduce operational toil, and make the product safer to ship every week.

Deliver Business-Critical Product Outcomes

• Partner with Product to turn ambiguous customer needs into crisp engineering plans, tradeoffs, and milestones—especially where workflows span multiple systems and stakeholders.

• Own the “hard parts” of scaling: performance, data pipelines, integrations, permissions models, and the platform primitives that unlock faster feature delivery.

• Ensure engineering execution supports Condor’s enterprise motion: predictable delivery, secure deployments, and a strong customer trust posture.

Hire and Build the Early Engineering Org

• Recruit and retain A-level builders with the dynamic range to thrive at Series A: product-minded, accountable, and able to ship across the stack.

• Build the first layer of leadership (tech leads and/or managers) as the team grows; coach engineers to raise the bar on craft, ownership, and collaboration.

• Establish a high-velocity, high-quality recruiting and onboarding engine in partnership with operations/HR.

Be a Hands-On Leader at the Right Altitude

• Operate with “high dynamic range”: zoom in to root-cause issues and unblock shipping, then zoom out to design systems and org structure for the next 12–24 months.

• Represent engineering with clarity and credibility with executives, customers, and (as needed) the board—communicating tradeoffs, risk, timelines, and investment needs.

Qualifications

• Built and scaled engineering teams in high-growth environments. You’ve helped take a product from early traction to a more mature, reliable platform by putting the right process and technical foundations in place.

• High dynamic range + builder mindset. You can move from strategy to hands-on execution—mentoring, shipping, and debugging—while also designing the systems that allow a team to scale.

• Strong product and cross-functional instincts. You partner well with Product and GTM, translate customer requirements into technical plans, and manage tradeoffs without losing momentum.

• Operational rigor without slowing down. You’ve implemented pragmatic SDLC practices (planning, specs, reviews, testing, release, incident response) and can drive high uptime and reliability expectations.

• A-caliber recruiting and talent development. You are a “master recruiter” who can attract strong engineers and build the leadership bench as the org grows.

• Leadership traits that work at Condor. Humble, direct, high-ownership, and transparent—comfortable surfacing disagreement, driving alignment, and building trust across technical and non-technical stakeholders.