Lead Engineer - Technical Delivery

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 :

• A take-home technical exercise.
• A follow-up conversation about your approach and experience.
• A final meeting with the wider team.