Senior Engineering Manager (Ranking & Relevance)

Back to jobs New Senior Engineering Manager (Ranking & Relevance) New York, New York, United States; San Francisco, California, United States; Seattle, Washington, United States Apply Headway’s mission is a big one – to build a new mental health care system everyone can access. We’ve built technology that helps people find great therapists with the first software-enabled national network of providers accepting insurance.  1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but the majority of providers don’t accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway is building a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access by making it easy for therapists to accept insurance and scale their practice.  Headway was founded in 2019. Since then, we’ve grown into a diverse, national network of over 60,000 mental healthcare providers across all 50 states who run their practice on our software and have served over 1 million patients. We’re a Series D company with over $325m in funding from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Accel, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Spark Capital, Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures and Health Care Service Corporation. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better. About the team The Ranking & Relevance team’s mission is to help every patient find the right provider for their needs. We are building the matching systems that power this connection, from search and discovery to ranking and personalization. Our goal is to combine cutting-edge machine learning with robust product engineering to deliver a search experience that balances incentives for patients, providers, payers, and Headway’s growth. The team sits at the heart of Headway’s marketplace, owning the technology that determines how patients discover and connect with therapists. This means working at the intersection of user experience, marketplace design, and applied machine learning. About the role We are looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead and grow our Ranking & Relevance engineering organization. This role is ideal for a leader who has built search, ranking, or recommendation systems and knows what good looks like in these domains. You will guide a cross-disciplinary team of software and machine learning engineers to design, build, and scale Headway’s matching and personalization systems. You’ll partner closely with product, data, design, and operations leaders to create the foundation for how millions of patients connect with the right therapist. You’ll play a central role in shaping the team’s strategy, technical direction, and culture—helping Headway build the mental healthcare marketplace of the future. What you’ll do Lead and grow a team of software and ML engineers building Headway’s search, ranking, and personalization systems. Define and drive the technical strategy for how patients discover and connect with providers, from search retrieval to model-driven ranking. Partner with cross-functional leaders to translate business objectives into measurable outcomes that improve matching relevance, patient conversion, and business growth. Build and scale reliable search infrastructure, leveraging technologies such as Elasticsearch and modern ML pipelines. Mentor and develop engineers and emerging leaders, fostering a culture of technical excellence, curiosity, and accountability. Collaborate with peers across Engineering, Product, and Data Science to define success metrics, design A/B experiments, and continually improve model and product performance. Contribute to broader engineering leadership efforts as Headway continues to scale its systems and teams. Who you are You have 3–5+ years of engineering management experience leading high-performing software or ML engineering teams, ideally in ranking, search, or recommendation systems. You have 5+ years of prior experience as a software or ML engineer , building large-scale distributed systems or ML-powered products. You’ve built or scaled search or ranking systems from scratch , and understand what excellence looks like across retrieval, relevance, and personalization. You’re comfortable managing teams that span ML and software engineering , bridging disciplines to deliver cohesive, user-impacting systems. You’re a strong cross-functional partner who can balance competing marketplace incentives, aligning patient, provider, and business goals into a coherent technical vision. You bring product intuition to your technical leadership, caring deeply about the user experience and long-term system outcomes. You foster a culture of learning, psychological safety, and high performance , developing your team into thoughtful builders and decision-makers. Nice to have Experience building and scaling systems using Elasticsearch or similar search technologies. Prior experience in health tech, marketplaces, or other highly regulated, multi-sided domains. Exposure to ML infrastructure such as model deployment, retraining pipelines, and monitoring tools. Familiarity with modern ranking and personalization approaches (e.g., embeddings, vector search, or reinforcement learning for recommendations). Our interview process After you apply to Headway, here are some details of what to expect during the interview process. Initial screen : You’ll connect with someone in recruiting so you can learn more about the team, Headway’s mission and exciting growth, and we can get a better idea of your background.  First rounds: You'll meet with an engineering leader on the team to go deeper into your team and people leadership experiences and complete one technical (systems design) interview. Final rounds : You’ll meet team members across product and engineering leadership for multiple behavioral interviews, leaving you with a fuller picture of what it’s like to work at Headway. References and the Offer : Our favorite part of the process! We'll send over all of the details, including specifics on employee equity, and congratulatory messages from excited future team members! Compensation & Benefits: The expected base pay range for this position is $ 234,600 - $ 276,000 , based on a variety of factors including qualifications, experience, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for performance-based variable compensation and an equity grant, depending on the position and level. We are committed to offering a comprehensive and competitive total rewards package, including robust health and wellness benefits, retirement savings, and meaningful ownership opportunities through equity. Compensation decisions are made holistically, ensuring fairness and alignment with market benchmarks while recognizing individual contributions and potential. Benefits offered include: Equity compensation Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage HSA / FSA 401K Work-from-Home Stipend Therapy Reimbursement 16-week parental leave for eligible employees Carrot Fertility annual reimbursement and membership 13 paid holidays each year as well as a Holiday Break during the week between December 25th and December 31st Flexible PTO Employee Assistance Program (EAP) Training and professional development We believe a team's strength is in its people, and we cannot achieve this mission without a team that reflects the diversity of this problem – across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, national origin, religion, family status, disability, military status, and experience. Headway is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Headway will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please inform the recruiter when they contact you to schedule your interview. Headway employees work remotely across the US, with the option to work from offices in New York City, San Francisco and Seattle. Headway participates in E-Verify. To learn more, click  here. Create a Job Alert Interested in building your career at Headway? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email. 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