Principal Quality Engineer

We're hiring a Principal Quality Engineer to own quality as a discipline at Heartbeat - not to build a QA team, but to define how quality works across our engineering and product organization. This person will establish principles, practices, and systems that make quality intrinsic to how we develop, validate, and release software.

This is a founding role. Quality today is strong - our engineers and product team own it directly, with solid automated regression coverage already in place. We're making this investment because the platform's complexity and clinical scope warrant a dedicated senior person focused entirely on making quality systematic, scalable, and increasingly efficient. The right person will free up engineering leverage while raising the bar on testability, risk management, and release confidence across a complex, highly configurable clinical platform.

Quality strategy for our clinical platform 

Define what quality means at Heartbeat, how we measure it, and how we improve it - across partner-specific configurations, clinical decision support, workflow orchestration, and integration points. You own the quality outcomes, not just the test artifacts.

Validation architecture

Design the systems that make validation fast, reliable, and low-friction - test data strategies, environment management, automation frameworks, CI/CD integration. Give engineers back time by making quality infrastructure a force multiplier, not a tax.

Release confidence

Strengthen release predictability by systematizing validation earlier in the development lifecycle. When something ships, the team should know - with evidence - that it works.

Embedded cross-functional partnership 

This is not a handoff role. You'll sit inside the development process - participating in refinement, influencing how work is scoped and acceptance criteria are defined, shaping what "done" means. You're a core member of a small, high-impact team where everyone has direct access to product, engineering, and clinical leadership.

Exploratory testing where it matters 

Perform targeted exploratory testing on high-risk areas - new features, edge cases, partner-specific configuration behavior, clinical workflow paths. You know when automation is the right tool and when human judgment is the only tool.

• You've established or significantly evolved a QA function - not just executed within one. You've defined the principles, chosen the tools, and changed how a team thinks about quality.

• You work as a peer alongside engineers and product, not downstream from them. You influence development practices, not just validate outputs.

• You have deep technical fluency in test automation, CI/CD, and testing infrastructure. You can build frameworks, not just use them.

• You think in systems: risk models, failure modes, configuration matrices, integration boundaries - not just test cases and coverage percentages.

• You balance automation with exploratory testing and have strong judgment about when each is appropriate.

• You're comfortable with ambiguity. This role has clear objectives but no playbook. You'll define the structure.

• Experience in healthcare, fintech, or other regulated industries where reliability, auditability, and documentation rigor are non-negotiable.

• Familiarity with clinical data standards or healthcare integrations (FHIR, HL7, CCDA).

• Experience testing highly configurable systems - platforms where behavior varies significantly by client, configuration, or data conditions.

• Practical experience validating AI/ML-assisted workflows, including understanding the difference between testing deterministic logic and testing probabilistic systems.

Our core development team is small and intentionally lean. Every team member has outsized impact on how the platform grows.

We value solutions that are understandable, maintainable, and right-sized. We ship small, testable increments and adjust based on what we learn. Our process is Kanban-style flow — not rigid sprints or bloated backlogs. We invest in tooling and observability so we can understand what's happening in production and move quickly with confidence.

We avoid silos. Engineers collaborate directly with product, clinical, and compliance stakeholders through shared ownership, not handoffs. The best outcomes come from close, cross-functional work - not heavyweight processes or long ticket queues.

This is a remote-first, high-autonomy environment. You need to be comfortable working independently, collaborating asynchronously, and shipping incrementally.

• We are mission-driven: we're revolutionizing the way cardiovascular care is delivered 

• We are fast-paced & agile: we move quickly, iterate often, and value experimentation

• We are remote-first: flexibility, autonomy, and trust are at the core of how we operate
• We care about diversity: diversity allows us to build an excellent patient experience

• We are an equal opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status