Staff Software Engineer, Cedar
Product Engineering
$216.8-255k
+ Equity
AI-powered platform that helps patients afford and navigate healthcare payments
Open for applications
AI-powered platform that helps patients afford and navigate healthcare payments
201-500 employees
Open for applications
$216.8-255k
+ Equity
201-500 employees
Company mission
To empower us all to easily and affordably pursue the care we need.
Role
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
What the job involves
- 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
- 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 Patient Pillar 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-Centric Communication
- 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
- 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
- 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 50% 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
Our take
Over $1 billion is said to be lost annually by physicians as a result of inefficient and disjointed healthcare billing practices. The subsequently low patient satisfaction rates lead to poorer care, and real losses for providers who see patients switching away from their plans.
Cedar looks to remedy these issues with a selection of consumer-facing services which streamline billing, insurance and healthcare processes. Healthcare billing concerns a huge percentage of US adults, so optimizing patient satisfaction is of increasing concern - a great opportunity for the company.
After acquiring competing patient finance streamlining service OODA Health in 2021, Cedar netted substantial funds and launched its Payer Intelligence Layer. This allows it to integrate data from insurers and providers to create a single source of information. The company was also endorsed by the Montana Hospital Association's shared services division, to be listed as its only preferred patient financial engagement technology.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Dec 2022
$68.4m
SERIES D
Mar 2021
$200m
SERIES D
Total funding: $394.4m
Company benefits
- Flexibility to work from home or in the office, depending on what works best for you
- Multiple health / dental / vision insurance options
- Office in Manhattan
- Free lunch, healthy snacks, cold brew and kombucha on tap (Yup!)
- Unlimited PTO for vacation, sick and mental health days–we encourage everyone to take at least 20 days of vacation per year
- 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)
- Equity (for qualifying roles) and health benefits that start on your first day
- 401k plan with 3% employer non-election contribution
- Access to hands-on mentorship, employee and management coaching, and a stipend for learning and development resources to help you grow both professionally and personally
- Up to $10,000 in reimbursement through Carrot Fertility to support comprehensive, inclusive care for family-forming and reproductive health journeys
- Constant learning and development opportunities
- Resources for mental and physical wellbeing
Company HQ
Tribeca, New York, NY
Leadership
Arel Lidow
(Co-Founder)Previously VP of product at AppNexus where they supervised the development and launch of the company’s flagship products. Began their career as a technology associate at Bridgewater Associates, working on trading systems for the world’s largest hedge fund.
Dr. Florian Otto
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously an executive at Zocdoc where they drove the commercial adoption of the platform. Also founded a daily deal company in Brazil (ClubeUrbano) that was eventually acquired by Groupon. Began their business career as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company.
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