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jrowley

1,727 karma · joined October 9, 2013

I'm a software engineer that is fascinated by healthcare. Outside of healthcare, software and hardware, I am interested in running, politics, and music.

Currently I'm a software engineer at Pomelo Care. Before that, I was the Head of Engineering at clinical trial company called Curebase.

Berkeley, CA

https://funk.dog

linkedin.com/in/joerowley

twitter.com/joer14

hn - at - funk. dog

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/joer; my proof: https://keybase.io/joer/sigs/FMZni_OvviV5SYFJulnHOXZQffzDreLQ4vzo5Y7QEl0 ]

submissionscomments
jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)
Pomelo Care | San Francisco, NYC, Remote - USA ONLY with Work Authorization | Software Engineer (mid career - Staff)

Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. We are Series B, with some notable investors like First Round and a16z. As a member of our engineering team, you will have the opportunity to shape the product, codebase, and culture at Pomelo for years to come. On any given day, you may:

- Write clean, elegant code to build new features and keep our platform humming

- Design new systems to enable Pomelo's clinical team to deliver personalized care to an expanding patient population

- Build a great mobile experience so pregnant women and new parents feel they have a support team in their pocket

Tools we use:

- GCP, Kotlin, Typescript, React, React Native, Terraform, Spanner DB, Big Query, DuckDB, Dagster, DBT, K8s

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is phenomenal, so I recommend applying if you're looking to learn a lot and make a big impact in an important space.

Learn more here: https://www.pomelocare.com/careers

jrowley··on Fragmented medical records delayed treatment for months
Are you familiar with Health information exchanges (HIE)?

This is a very challenging and important problem. I encourage to keep working on it.

jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2025)
Pomelo Care | San Francisco, NYC, Remote - USA ONLY with Work Authorization | Software Engineer (mid career - Staff)

Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. We are Series B, with some notable investors like First Round and a16z. As an early member of our engineering team, you will have the opportunity to shape the product, codebase, and culture at Pomelo for years to come. On any given day, you may:

- Write clean, elegant code to build new features and keep our platform humming

- Design new systems to enable Pomelo's clinical team to deliver personalized care to an expanding patient population

- Build a great mobile experience so pregnant women and new parents feel they have a support team in their pocket

Tools we use:

- GCP, Kotlin, Typescript, React, React Native, Terraform, Spanner DB, Big Query, DuckDB, Dagster, DBT, K8s

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is phenomenal, so I recommend applying if you're looking to learn a lot and make a big impact in an important space.

Learn more here: https://www.pomelocare.com/careers

jrowley··on Ask HN: Is Twilio necessary and required to build text and voice agents?
I recommend Daily.co + Pipecat! https://www.daily.co/ https://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat
jrowley··on Open Sauce is a confoundingly brilliant Bay Area event
I had no idea about his staunch anti choice stance. Pretty gnarly stance to say abortion is unacceptable in all cases (including incest, rape, etc). This is good to know and changes my perspective on him. Thank you for sharing.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2025)
Pomelo Care | San Francisco, NYC, Remote - USA ONLY with Work Authorization | Software Engineer (mid career - Staff), AI Automation Engineer, Senior Product Designer

Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. We are Series B, with some notable investors like First Round and a16z. As an early member of our engineering team, you will have the opportunity to shape the product, codebase, and culture at Pomelo for years to come. On any given day, you may:

- Write clean, elegant code to build new features and keep our platform humming

- Design new systems to enable Pomelo's clinical team to deliver personalized care to an expanding patient population

- Build a great mobile experience so pregnant women and new parents feel they have a support team in their pocket

Tools we use:

- GCP, Kotlin, Typescript, React, React Native, Terraform, Spanner DB, Big Query, DuckDB, Dagster, DBT, K8s

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is phenomenal, so I recommend applying if you're looking to learn a lot and make a big impact in an important space.

Learn more here: https://www.pomelocare.com/careers

jrowley··on Tell HN: Namecheap pre-purchasing searched domain names?
Namecheap CEO denies they are responsible, offering $50k to anyone who can prove they are behind it:

> This is false, we do not monitor customer searches nor do we register domains that have been searched on our site. I've said this before and I'll say it again here, if anyone cares to prove that this actually exists and someone within our company is registering searched domain names I will give them a 50k reward on the spot.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35344122#:~:text=Namech...

jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2025)
Pomelo Care | San Francisco, NYC, Remote (USA only) | Software Engineer (mid career - Staff), Data Engineer, Senior Product Manager, Senior Product Designer

Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. We are Series B, with some notable investors like First Round and a16z. As an early member of our engineering team, you will have the opportunity to shape the product, codebase, and culture at Pomelo for years to come. On any given day, you may:

- Write clean, elegant code to build new features and keep our platform humming

- Design new systems to enable Pomelo's clinical team to deliver personalized care to an expanding patient population

- Build a great mobile experience so pregnant women and new parents feel they have a support team in their pocket

Tools we use:

- GCP, Kotlin, Typescript, React, React Native, Terraform, Spanner DB, Big Query, DuckDB, Dagster, DBT, K8s

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is phenomenal, so I recommend applying if you're looking to learn a lot and make a big impact in an important space.

Learn more here: https://www.pomelocare.com/careers

jrowley··on $1000 bug bounty for better healthcare with the FDA, CDC, and Kaiser Permanente
Are you able appeal a denied claim to kaiser member services? Maybe you can trigger broader policy change / system update by getting them to look a single case (and having a doctor advocate strongly on your behalf)

Even if it doesn't trigger broader policy change, you could get a playbook in place to help others get their review processed faster, e.g. send this form letter, linking to document x and y.

jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2024)
Pomelo Care | San Francisco, NYC, Remote (USA only) | Software Engineer (mid career - Staff) Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. As an early member of our engineering team, you will have the opportunity to shape the product, codebase, and culture at Pomelo for years to come.

On any given day, you may:

- Write clean, elegant code to build new features and keep our platform humming

- Design new systems to enable Pomelo's clinical team to deliver personalized care to an expanding patient population

- Build a great mobile experience so pregnant women and new parents feel they have a support team in their pocket

Tools we use:

- GCP, Kotlin, Typescript, React, React Native, Terraform, Spanner DB, Big Query, DuckDB, Dagster, DBT, K8s

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is the best so I recommend applying if you're looking to learn a lot and make a big impact in an important space.

Learn more here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/pomelocare

jrowley··on Ask HN: What do you do with your old Intel MacBooks?
It's my home assistant server (running in a vm), with a built in UPS ;)
jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2024)
Unfortunately not at the moment, but we hope to support entry level SWE positions in the future.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2024)
My personal email is in my bio. Or you can do my first name @pomelocare.com

I'm not the hiring manager or anything but I can try to answer your questions.

jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2024)
I also want to note that we recently hired an amazing data engineer after they found out about us from a prior who is hiring thread. So please apply if you are interested.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2024)
Pomelo Care | San Francisco, NYC, Remote (USA only) | Software Engineer (mid career - Staff)

Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. As an early member of our engineering team, you will have the opportunity to shape the product, codebase, and culture at Pomelo for years to come.

On any given day, you may:

- Write clean, elegant code to build new features and keep our platform humming

- Design new systems to enable Pomelo's clinical team to deliver personalized care to an expanding patient population

- Build a great mobile experience so pregnant women and new parents feel they have a support team in their pocket

Tools we use:

- GCP, Kotlin, Typescript, React, React Native, Terraform, Spanner DB, Big Query, DuckDB, Dagster, DBT, K8s

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is the best so I recommend applying if you're looking to learn a lot and make a big impact in an important space.

Learn more here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/pomelocare

jrowley··on Ask HN: Is there a Google Form like solution for Dropbox?
Not sure about how polished of a solution you’re looking for, or if you’re on iOS, but I bet you could cook up an iOS shortcut to create a new file and drop it into Dropbox or iCloud. Another script could aggregate those into a single CSV?
jrowley··on Advice Needed: Applying to YC with a new idea and account, after rejection
In the details page about opening up the W24 batch again it states "This is for founders that did not already apply for the W24 batch at some point in the past."[0]

Seems pretty explicit to me. I would recommend instead focusing on moving your startup along and so you're better positioned to apply in a subsequent batch.

0. https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/new-year-new-company

jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2023)
Hey! I’m sorry to hear you had a negative experience with our interview process. If you want to setup time to talk, my email is in my bio.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2023)
Pomelo Care | San Francisco, Remote (USA only) | Software Engineer (mid career - Staff), Data Engineer, Senior Product Designer, Senior Product Manager

Engineering JD: Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. As an early member of our engineering team, you will have the opportunity to shape the product, codebase, and culture at Pomelo for years to come.

On any given day, you may:

- Write clean, elegant code to build new features and keep our platform humming

- Design new systems to enable Pomelo's clinical team to deliver personalized care to an expanding patient population

- Build a great mobile experience so pregnant women and new parents feel they have a support team in their pocket

Tools we use:

- GCP, Kotlin, Typescript, React, React Native, Terraform, Spanner DB, Big Query, Dagster, K8s

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is the best so I recommend applying if you're looking to learn a lot and make a big impact in an important space!

Learn more here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/pomelocare

jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2023)
Hey @sz0u Thank you for applying. Unfortunately we have some contracts with large customers that forbid us from accessing data outside US borders, so right now to my knowledge we require all work to be done within the country.

Some of my favorite colleagues at former companies were working outside the US, so I know how much we are missing out with these restrictions. I hope as we grow we’ll be better positioned to negotiate and then be able to have a more inclusive, global team.

I wish you the best of luck with your job search and thank you again for applying

jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2023)
Pomelo Care | San Francisco, Remote (USA only) | Software Engineer (mid career), Product Operations, IT Support Engineer

Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. As an early member of our engineering team, you will have the opportunity to shape the product, codebase, and culture at Pomelo for years to come.

On any given day, you may:

- Write clean, elegant code to build new features and keep our platform humming

- Design new systems to enable Pomelo's clinical team to deliver personalized care to an expanding patient population

- Build a caring mobile experience so pregnant women and new parents feel they have a support team in their pocket

Tools we use:

- GCP, Kotlin, Typescript, React, React Native, Terraform, Spanner DB, Big query

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is the best so I recommend applying if you're looking to learn a lot and make a big impact in important space!

Learn more here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/pomelocare

jrowley··on Show HN: HyperDX – open-source dev-friendly Datadog alternative
Antlr is pretty robust too, might be worth checking out.

https://www.antlr.org/

jrowley··on Ask HN: What are your favorite iOS/macOS automations?
Not OP but Apple’s native Reminders app supports shared lists.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Why are most Startups asking for US Remote instead of just Remote?
Some employers have gov or otherwise paranoid customers that require data not leave the country.
jrowley··on Ask HN: What to do when a new job isn't a right fit?
It may be worth doing an exercise:

Imagine your dream role at this company. Is it possible for there to be a role like that at this company? What’s the closest thing? What would it take to move into that position? How would you communicate that to your manager?

Also, this may be a good opportunity to zoom out from work, and address other problems or issues you might have in personal life or even pick up a new or old hobby. Do your job, but remember it’s work, nothing personal, simply “clock in” and “clock out”.

jrowley··on Ask HN: Do you keep wrong code in a comment as a reminder of what doesn't work?
It might be more prudent to write some unit tests to enforce the desired behavior, in particular any edge cases the current solution supports that past solutions didn’t support.

Then when working on refactoring you have the tests as a reminder of what cases need to be supported.

jrowley··on Ask HN: Those with ADHD, how are you doing?
Emotional regulation issues / mood swings are definitely associated with ADHD. I'll echo what another commenter wrote, vyvanse definitely has changed my life for the better. At the moment I'm not taking it due insurance but I plan to get back on it when my insurance changes.

I'd recommend you seek treatment with a professional. CBT can do wonders too.

jrowley··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2023)
Pomelo Care | San Francisco Bay Area, Remote (must be USA) | Founding Product Designer

Pomelo Care is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, engineers and problem solvers who are passionate about improving care for moms and babies. We’re looking for our first design hire to help us build applications, systems, and workflows that enable us to help moms have healthier babies.

You will:

- Work closely with our Product, Engineering, Data, Marketing, Clinical, and Partnerships teams to build exceptional products and user experiences.

- Have substantial opportunities to drive end-to-end design decisions, conduct user research, and help ship products.

- Be expected to lead design for our patient-facing application as well as our clinician-facing one from day one. Shape our care experience from first to Nth interaction.

Personally, I've never had so much fun and learned so much at work. This team is the best so I recommend applying if you're interested!

Learn more here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/pomelocare/jobs/4370217004

jrowley··on What is REM sleep and why is it important?
But to be clear, it's very dangerous to sleep with a baby especially if they are preterm / high risk.
jrowley··on Ask HN: Best LastPass alternatives for corporate password management
We were just having this conversation yesterday and decided to bite the bullet and move to 1Password. Not that much more expensive, native desktop clients, name isn't synonymous with leaks/vulnerabilities.
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