Special Projects Lead

About Freshpaint:

Customer data is the fuel that drives all modern businesses. From product analytics, to marketing, to support, to advertising, advanced data analysis in the warehouse, and even sales – customer data is the raw material for each function at a modern business.

For highly regulated businesses in healthcare, it’s always been a challenge to harness that customer data and get it to the marketing and analytics tools that require it while following patient privacy laws….until now.

Something as simple as running ads to get more users is simple for an e-commerce of software company to do. But common web analytics and advertising tools collect sensitive user identifiers and healthcare information automatically. Those same tools are not HIPAA compliant.

We provide a layer of data governance to make current web analytics tools HIPAA-compliant. For analytics, our customers can continue getting the insights they need to improve the patient experience. For marketing, Freshpaint safeguards health information while helping our customers promote access to care through popular advertising platforms like Facebook, Google, and others.

In short, we help healthcare marketers promote access to care and safeguard patient privacy at the same time. This is an important, complex problem in a massive market (healthcare is 20% of the US GDP).

Our customers manage their customer data with:

1. Privacy Platform. We help healthcare providers automate their website’s + app’s HIPAA compliance, and safeguard patient data. This is our core product today
2. Future additional product lines! Our core product provides a platform that we're building marketing applications on top of.

We’re fully remote. If you strongly value in-person work, Freshpaint is likely not the best fit for you. Even though we don’t care where you’re located, we only hire within the US. Many of our team is concentrated in various metro areas like SF or NYC. To balance out our remote-ness, we gather the team 2x times per year for offsites. We’re backed by leading investors including Y-Combinator, Intel Capital, and angel investors like the Head of Data from Slack, Head of Data at LinkedIn, and more.

Who We Are:

Freshpaint was founded by web analytics veterans who realized how hard it was for highly regulated companies to collect and use customer data in a compliant way. We started as part of Y Combinator’s S19 cohort and have been focused on enabling healthcare companies collect, safeguard, and activate patient data since.

In 2022 the government issued updated guidance around HIPAA, basically making our software a requirement to use for healthcare companies. As a result, we're one of the fastest growing software companies on earth right now.

Our team has deep analytics and growth experience, with all of us coming from high-growth companies like Heap, Pendo, Iterable, Quantum Metric, and Retool. If you value lots of freedom and ownership in your work, interfacing with customers, and working on a product with high customer impact, then Freshpaint is your home.

The Role

We’re looking for a someone to join our newly formed R&D team. This isn’t a traditional strategy job, rather it’s entrepreneurial, scrappy, and highly exploratory. You’ll work at the earliest stages of problem discovery and solution design, partnering with engineers, product managers, and leadership to test and validate new product bets for Freshpaint.

This role is especially well-suited for former founders or co-founders, including those whose startups didn’t succeed but who learned through the process of launching, iterating, and adapting. If you’ve worn multiple hats, operated without a playbook, and thrived in the uncertainty of early-stage building, you’ll feel right at home here.

What You’Ll Do

• Drive the discovery process for R&D initiatives, from problem framing to hypothesis generation.
• Partner with engineers to design quick prototypes and run experiments with real users.
• Research markets, competitors, and customer behaviors to identify opportunities and whitespace.
• Help define and prioritize the R&D roadmap in alignment with company strategy and adjacent areas for expansion.
• Translate messy learnings into clear insights for leadership.
• Bring a founder’s mentality! Bias toward action, resilience in the face of failure, and relentless curiosity.

What We’Re Looking For

• Entrepreneurial experience: past founder, co-founder, or very early operator at a startup (especially software/tech).
• Experience building, launching, or iterating on software products.
• Ability to zoom between high-level vision and hands-on execution.
• Sharp analytical and research skills; ability to connect dots across markets.
• Clear, compelling communicator and storyteller.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and creating structure from scratch.
• Bonus: experience in product strategy, venture building, or innovation labs.
• We take care of our team—here’s a peek at what you get when you join:

Perks & Benefits

• Generous Parental Leave

• Competitive pay + generous equity (10-year exercise window)
• Fully remote (U.S. only) with a $150/month coworking stipend
• Half-day Fridays, every Friday
• Unlimited PTO—with a required 2-week minimum
• Top-tier health, dental & vision (100% covered for you, 80% for dependents)
• 2 “Treat Yourself” days a year—$100 and a day off, just because
• Epic offsites twice a year (past trips: Greece, Jackson Hole, Cabo, wine country + more)
• And more—check out our careers page for the full list.