Software Engineer I

The Division of Digital Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital, builds mindLAMP: an open-source platform used by researchers and clinicians worldwide to understand mental health through smartphone and wearable data. Our software is currently in use in hundreds of studies, with thousands of participants. The code you write will have an immediate impact on global psychiatric knowledge generation.

This is an early-career position in an academic lab.

• Ownership you will not get elsewhere at this stage. You will not be a cog on a feature team. Within months you will own meaningful pieces of a production health platform end to end: design, code, review, ship, and see it running in live studies
• Weekly mentorship from the senior engineer, and access to and training in coding harness (Claude Code, Codex) development workflows
• A public portfolio by default. Nearly all of our code is open source under the BIDMC GitHub org. Every PR you merge is a work sample you can show anyone, forever
• Data standard development exposure. Work with the engineering team with NIH funding to develop new data standards in smartphone and wearable data
• Publication opportunities. Our engineering work supports peer-reviewed research, and contributors are regularly included on papers
• A Harvard Medical School-affiliated hospital on your resume, and a genuine mission of better, more accessible mental health care
• Sane hours and flexibility. Academic pace, no on-call heroics

A sample roadmap for high-impact goals in the next year of development:

• Full-stack TypeScript: features and fixes across our Node.js/Express API server and React dashboard
• Native mobile: hardening and modernizing our iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin) apps that run passive sensor data collection
• Wearables: helping design and build integrations for consumer health APIs (Apple Health, Health Connect, and cloud wearable services)
• Security and reliability: authentication, encrypted storage, audit-worthy logging. As a research tool we treat participant data protection as a first-class engineering problem
• Testing and CI: helping build the automated safety net to enable a larger external open source collaborator network

This list is short on purpose:

• Solid programming fundamentals in at least one language we use (TypeScript/JavaScript, Kotlin, Swift, or Python) and the ability to learn the others
• Something you have built that you can show and explain. A class project, an open-source contribution, or a personal app all count; polish matters less than your ability to walk us through your decisions
• Git basics and the willingness to work in code review
• Clear written communication. We are a small distributed research team and most coordination is written

None of these are required:

• Coursework or projects touching health data, research, or human-subjects work
• Exposure to React, REST APIs, MongoDB, or mobile development
• Interest in mental health, digital phenotyping, or clinical research

You will thrive here if you ask questions early, take feedback well, and get satisfaction from making real systems more correct, more secure, and easier to change.

TypeScript/Node.js/Express · React · MongoDB · Redis · native iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin) · Docker · GitHub Actions. All open source at github.com/BIDMCDigitalPsychiatry

• Full-time position based at BIDMC in Boston, MA
• BIDMC benefits, including health insurance, retirement, and hospital-employee benefits

The Division of Digital Psychiatry advances mental health care through smartphone-based digital phenotyping, digital therapeutics, AI safety evaluation, digital literacy initiatives, and technology-enhanced clinical programs, including the Digital Clinic model for depression and anxiety. The Division's work has informed Congress, the FDA, the UK MHRA, the WHO, and the American Psychiatric Association.

Learn more: docs.lamp.digital

BIDMC is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds, including those without traditional CS degrees.