Head of Technology

 

About Pedestal Health

 

Pedestal Health (formerly Target RWE) is a rapidly growing company at the intersection of clinical research, healthcare, and technology, focused on reimagining clinical evidence generation. The company partners with pharmaceutical and biotech companies, providers, and payers to generate rigorous, multimodal evidence that supports clinical, regulatory, and strategic decision-making across the full lifecycle of care. Pedestal Health is committed to advancing medical decision-making to improve patient outcomes. Pedestal Health is a Highlander Health company. Learn more at  pedestalhealth.com .

The Role

Every clinical data point has a life story. A clinician records it during a visit, and it passes through many systems and hands before reaching a regulatory submission. Multiply that by dozens of health systems, each handling data differently, then add claims, trial forms, and other data feeds. Add the fact that 80-90% of healthcare data lives in unstructured formats, and the result is a mosaic. This mosaic is only as trustworthy as the way its pieces fit together. As trials and real-world data blend into continuous evidence generation, this mosaic is becoming the field's central problem.

Pedestal Health is hiring a Head of Technology to build the foundation that makes the mosaic trustworthy. That means a documented chain of custody from the point of care to the final dataset, a single quality standard across every source, the ability to extract valuable information from unstructured data, and the security that earns the trust of health systems and sponsors. In this role, you will own two areas that depend on each other. The first is the data engineering, platforms, and user-facing applications that turn clinical data from our health system partners into products our clients rely on. The second is the IT and security programs that keep our people productive, our systems protected, and our partners confident in how we handle their data. The right candidate will have experience working with health systems and healthcare data, preferably electronic health record (EHR) data.

You will lead data engineering, cloud infrastructure, our internal data and application platforms, and corporate IT and security through a team of engineering and IT leaders. This is a leader-of-leaders role: you will set architecture, standards, and priorities, grow strong leaders, and keep enough technical depth to pressure-test designs and make the hard calls.

You will partner closely with leaders across the organization, including the Product Team, who define what we are building, Quantitative Sciences, whose analyses depend on the data being right, and the Health Systems Team, who will need your help in building trust with our health system partners.

What You’ll Do

Clinical Data Acquisition and Engineering

Work with Product to set the strategy and architecture for acquiring clinical data from a growing network of health system partners, across Epic, Cerner, and other EHRs

Own our approach to de-identification and tokenization, balancing accuracy, speed, cost, and privacy, along with the vendor partnerships behind it

Set the bar for data reliability, completeness, and quality that clients and partners can trust, and make quality measurable and visible with Quantitative Sciences

Ensure every dataset we hold meets our BAA and DUA commitments, from retention through destruction

Shape the data expansion roadmap with Product and Commercial, including claims linkage and new third-party sources

Platform and Technology Strategy

Own the technology vision for our data platform and the products built on it

Make the major architecture and build-versus-buy decisions, and set the engineering standards teams build to

Ensure the platform scales ahead of demand from AI/ML, Quantitative Sciences, and Product

Be accountable for cloud cost efficiency as data volume and partner sites grow

Security, Compliance, and Enterprise IT

Own the company's security and compliance posture, including HIPAA, HITRUST, and SOC2, and report on risk to leadership

Serve as the accountable executive in health system and sponsor security reviews and audits

Set the enterprise IT strategy, delivered through our IT leader, so our people have secure, reliable tools that scale with the company

Partner with the Head of AI/ML to make AI governance enforceable through technical controls

Team Leadership and Cross-Functional Partnership

Lead and develop a team of engineering and IT leaders, and hold them accountable for delivery, quality, and team health

Design the engineering and IT organization as it grows: team structure, hiring plans, career paths, and when to build, buy, or outsource

Set the operating rhythm: planning, delivery metrics, on-call, and incident review

Own the engineering and IT budget, including cloud spend and vendor contracts

Serve as the executive counterpart to health system IT leaders during partner onboarding

Partner with Product, Quantitative Sciences, Medical, Commercial, and Clinical Operations on roadmap and priorities

Translate technical tradeoffs into clear business terms for the leadership team

What You’ll Bring

12+ years in engineering, including 5+ years leading multi-team organizations through engineering managers

Experience working with healthcare organizations and working with healthcare data

Experience overseeing corporate IT, directly or through an IT leader

Deep technical grounding in AWS data architecture (S3, Glue, Athena, EMR, Lake Formation, IAM) and infrastructure as code, enough to set direction and pressure-test designs

Experience with a cloud data warehouse such as Snowflake

Working knowledge of HIPAA and security frameworks such as HITRUST or SOC 2

A track record of hiring and developing engineering leaders, and scaling teams and platforms from early stage to growth

Experience owning an engineering budget, including cloud spend and vendor contracts

Clear written and verbal communication, and the judgment to balance speed, cost, and rigor

Experience supporting ML and LLM workloads in production

Familiarity with FHIR, OMOP, or other clinical data standards

Experience with tokenization and privacy-preserving record linkage (e.g., Datavant) is a plus

What We Offer You

Hybrid work — 3 days/week in our new office!

Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family

401(k) with company match

Generous PTO and company holidays

Paid parental leave

If you are ready to be part of a team where your work truly matters—where your expertise is valued, your growth is supported, and your contributions help shape the future of healthcare—Pedestal Health is the place for you. We’re building something meaningful together, and we’d love for you to be a part of it.

Pedestal Health is an equal opportunity employer and seeks candidates from diverse backgrounds and abilities.