Role : Lead Engineer, Technical Delivery

SUGEN | Nairobi, Kenya | Full-time

About SUGEN :

SUGEN is a Palo Alto-funded, Kenya-headquartered health technology startup founded by Stanford students. The company is building Kenya's complete in-facility hospital management system across registration, clinical care, diagnostics, pharmacy, billing, claims, reporting and interoperability. The platform is a single-codebase, multi-tenant and offline-tolerant system built for real clinical environments.

The Role :

SUGEN is looking for an exceptional hands-on engineer who can own both the hardest technical work and the delivery of what they build. You will architect systems, write production code, lead a team of engineers and drive deployments from an ambiguous hospital workflow to a working result.

Location & Work Arrangement :

- Location : Nairobi, Kenya, with sustained periods at county hospital sites.

- Work Arrangement : On-site in Nairobi for the first six months; hybrid may be discussed thereafter.

- Relocation : Relocation, work authorisation, and housing support are provided.

What You Will Own :

- Architect and build production systems across clinical workflows, data, integrations and platform infrastructure.

- Lead and grow a team of engineers, setting technical direction and delivery standards.

- Turn field observation and incomplete stakeholder input into a clear technical approach, working software and measurable acceptance criteria.

- Own delivery for your domain : priorities, milestones, dependencies, risks, decisions, releases and production follow-through.

- Set a high engineering bar for code review, testing, security, auditability, observability, backups and operational readiness.

The Bar :

- A demanding system personally built and deployed, with a repository, live product, technical walkthrough or other evidence that can be verified.

- Deep fluency in at least one backend language, strong SQL and confidence operating in Linux and cloud environments.

- Strong system-design instincts across APIs, data models, queues, concurrency, failure handling, security and observability.

- Evidence of leading an engineering team while taking ownership of difficult technical work.

- Daily, substantive use of Claude Code, Cursor or comparable AI engineering tools.

Selection Process :

1. A take-home technical exercise.

2. A follow-up conversation about your approach and experience.

3. A final meeting with the wider team.