CTO

CTO Co-Founder Healthcare Payments AI Startup New York, NY | In-Person

Our client is looking for an exceptional CTO (This is not an advisory CTO role, but hands-on) to lead technology, product architecture, and engineering execution for a new AI healthcare payments company.

This is a funded, early-stage venture built around a high-conviction thesis at the intersection of healthcare, payments, revenue cycle, and AI. The company is focused on improving complex financial workflows across the healthcare ecosystem, including provider-payer payment processes, claims workflows, revenue cycle operations, payment reconciliation, denials, and administrative automation.

This is not an advisory CTO role. We are looking for a hands-on technical leader who can build the product, architect the platform, recruit the early engineering team, and move quickly from MVP to scalable commercial product.

What We’re Building The company is developing an AI-enabled healthcare payments application designed to improve how healthcare organizations manage payment, claims, and revenue-cycle workflows.

The platform will use AI, workflow automation, data integrations, and secure infrastructure to reduce manual work, improve accuracy, accelerate payment processes, and create better visibility across healthcare financial operations.

Areas of focus may include Claims and payment workflow automation Provider-payer financial operations Revenue cycle and reimbursement workflows Denials, reconciliation, and payment exceptions Healthcare data ingestion and normalization Secure integrations with healthcare, billing, claims, and payment systems AI-assisted decisioning, workflow routing, and operational intelligence

What We’re Looking For We are looking for a CTO Co-Founder who combines strong technical depth with founder-level urgency.

Ideal candidates will have Experience building products from zero to one

Former founder or early technical leadership experience (Not Required) Structured technical training in computer science, engineering, or a related field

Graduate of top 10 School (examples given Penn, Columbia, UChicago, etc.)

Experience in top-tier engineering environments, high-growth startups, or complex technical organizations (think 1-2 years with Palantir in a Health Tech role)

Ability to personally build while also recruiting and leading an engineering team

Strong product instincts and comfort working with customers, commercial leaders, investors, and advisors

Interest or experience in healthcare, payments, fintech, revenue cycle, or healthcare infrastructure

A strong bias toward action and comfort operating with ambiguity

Healthcare payments experience is strongly preferred, but not required if the candidate has strong technical leadership experience in a regulated, data-heavy, workflow-heavy, or transaction-oriented environment.

Relevant Backgrounds Strong candidates may come from:

Healthcare technology Revenue cycle management Claims technology Payments / fintech AI workflow automation B2B SaaS Enterprise software Data infrastructure Healthcare interoperability Provider, payer, billing, or financial operations platforms

What You’ll Do Own the technology vision, architecture, and engineering roadmap Build and launch the initial product Evaluate and select the technical stack Design secure, scalable systems for healthcare payment workflows Build AI-enabled workflow automation into the product from the beginning Lead integrations with healthcare, claims, payment, billing, and data systems Recruit and lead the early engineering team Work directly with the CEO, investors, advisors, and early customers Turn a validated thesis into a scalable commercial product and company

You will have $150,000 base salary 15–20% equity Committed day-one capital A focused healthcare AI thesis (interest in healthcare and/or healthcare IT) Direct access to experienced operators, investors, advisors, and commercial resources The ability to build a company with meaningful impact in healthcare

Notes from HM The profiles submitted are skewing toward very senior leadership-level experience. For this position, we're looking more for someone earlier in their career, maybe a very recent graduate or someone less than 10 years out of school.

Please keep the school filter tight. The client referenced “Top 10” caliber schools and specifically noted that, in the current investment environment, pedigree matters.

Ideal candidates should combine

• Elite technical or academic background
• CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, founding engineer, or senior architecture experience
• Startup or high-growth company exposure
• Hands-on technical credibility
• Ability to lead product and engineering strategy
• Experience with AI, data, infrastructure, platform, SaaS, or scalable systems where relevant
• Ability to communicate well with founders, investors, and executive stakeholders Please avoid candidates whose main technical pedigree comes from broader regional schools unless they have exceptional startup CTO-level experience, notable exits, major product ownership, or a truly standout technical career. For this search, school pedigree is part of the investor-readiness screen. Please prioritize candidates whose academic and technical background would be viewed as credible in a venture-backed CTO context.

The hiring manager emphasized that “in this investment environment,” school pedigree matters. For this CTO search, please prioritize candidates from schools that carry strong investor recognition and elite technical credibility.This does not mean school is the only qualifier, but candidates should ideally have a background from a school that would be viewed as top-tier by founders, investors, and technical leadership teams.

Primary Target Schools Massachusetts Institute of Technology Stanford University Carnegie Mellon University University of California, Berkeley California Institute of Technology Harvard University Princeton University Cornell University Columbia University University of Pennsylvania University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Georgia Institute of Technology University of Washington University of Michigan University of Texas at Austin University of California, San Diego University of California, Los Angeles University of Southern California Duke University Northwestern University Rice University Johns Hopkins University Brown University Yale University University of Chicago

Elite International / Global Technical Schools University of Waterloo University of Toronto University of Oxford University of Cambridge Imperial College London ETH Zurich EPFL Technion – Israel Institute of Technology National University of Singapore Nanyang Technological University Indian Institute of Technology: Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kanpur, Kharagpur Tsinghua University Peking University

Must Have Built and launched a software product from concept/MVP to production.

Strong coding background with experience designing scalable, secure systems.

Experience building AI-powered products, automation platforms, or intelligent workflow systems.

Understanding of claims, payments, reimbursement workflows, financial operations, or other transaction-heavy regulated environments.

Experience hiring, building, and leading engineering teams while owning the technology roadmap.

Graduate of top 10 School (examples given Penn, Columbia, UChicago, etc.)