Software Design Engineer Jobs in Tennessee

This is OUR story... and YOUR next chapter

At HCA Healthcare, our Digital Transformation and Innovation (DT&I) team is redefining what’s possible in patient care. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, automation, and digital technologies, DT&I is helping drive meaningful improvements in clinical outcomes, reduce manual workload, and expand the reach of our care teams. If you're passionate about using technology to improve human life, this is where your work truly matters.

What you will accomplish in this role

The Staff Design Engineer is a senior individual contributor within the Product Design organization who combines product design judgment, modern software engineering practices, and AI-assisted application development to transform product concepts into secure, deployable software solutions.

This role serves as the technical extension of the Product Design team, helping bridge the gap between design intent and production implementation. Working alongside product designers, researchers, and stakeholders, the Staff Design Engineer converts validated workflows, prototypes, and user experiences into production-ready applications that can be deployed within HCA Healthcare’s enterprise ecosystem.

Unlike a traditional product designer focused primarily on research and visual design, or a traditional software engineer focused primarily on implementation, this role operates at the intersection of design, product, engineering, security, and platform delivery. The role is responsible for ensuring design-led solutions can successfully progress from discovery through prototype, technical hardening, enterprise review, cloud deployment, and ongoing iteration.

This role helps accelerate the delivery of both customer-facing healthcare applications and internal enterprise software used across Digital Transformation & Innovation (DT&I) and HCA Healthcare.

This role reports to the Director of Product Design Engineering within the Design organization.

What you will do:

Lead product design and user experience

• Partner with Product Designers to create intuitive, accessible, and user-centered application experiences.
• Contribute to user flows, wireframes, prototypes, design systems, interaction patterns, and application architecture.
• Ensure design intent, usability, accessibility, and workflow integrity are maintained throughout implementation.
• Participate in design reviews and provide technical guidance during discovery and solution development.

Use AI design and development tools

• Leverage tools such as Lovable, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, and emerging AI platforms to accelerate product discovery, prototyping, and application development.
• Evaluate, improve, and harden AI-generated code and application architectures.
• Establish repeatable workflows that improve design-to-production velocity across the organization.
• Help define best practices for AI-assisted product development within Product Design.

Build and refine working applications

• Transform design prototypes into functional, scalable applications.
• Refactor generated or prototype code into maintainable, enterprise-grade solutions.
• Develop reusable components, frontend architectures, and implementation patterns that align with design system standards.
• Improve application quality, responsiveness, accessibility, maintainability, observability, and performance.
• Serve as the primary technical bridge between Product Design and Engineering delivery teams.

Integrate with backend services and data

• Connect applications to APIs, MCP servers, databases, authentication providers, enterprise systems, and healthcare data platforms.
• Design secure integration patterns that support scalability and long-term maintainability.
• Collaborate with platform, infrastructure, and enterprise architecture teams to ensure alignment with organizational standards.
• Ensure data is handled safely with appropriate validation, access controls, privacy protections, and error handling.

Apply security and production readiness

• Own technical hardening activities required to move applications from prototype to enterprise deployment.
• Review applications for security risks, exposed secrets, insecure APIs, dependency vulnerabilities, authentication concerns, and access control gaps.
• Partner with cybersecurity, compliance, and engineering teams to ensure applications satisfy enterprise security, privacy, regulatory, and governance requirements.
• Support security reviews and production readiness assessments.

Support cloud deployment and maintenance

• Support deployment to approved cloud environments including Azure, Google Cloud, and other enterprise hosting platforms.
• Assist with CI/CD pipelines, environment configuration, monitoring, logging, release management, and operational support.
• Collaborate with platform engineering teams to ensure applications meet enterprise reliability and operational standards.
• Help establish deployment patterns that reduce friction between Product Design and enterprise delivery team.

Collaborate across teams

• Work closely with business stakeholders, clinicians, product managers, designers, engineers, cybersecurity teams, cloud teams, enterprise architects, and operational leaders.
• Gather feedback, iterate rapidly, and document technical and design decisions.
• Support both customer-facing healthcare products and internal software platforms used across DT&I and HCA Healthcare.
• Drive solutions from discovery through deployment while maintaining alignment with user needs, business goals, and technical constraints.
• Performs other duties as assigned.
• Practices and adheres to the “Code of Conduct” philosophy and “Mission and Value Statement.”

What qualifications you will need:

• Bachelor's degree required
• 8+ years of experience spanning product design, design engineering, frontend engineering, product engineering, or related digital product disciplines required
• Strong experience translating user workflows and product concepts into functional applications preferred
• Demonstrated experience building and deploying production software in enterprise environments preferred
• Strong frontend engineering experience using React, Next.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, and modern web frameworks required
• Experience integrating applications with APIs, databases, authentication providers, cloud services, and enterprise platforms required
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Lovable, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, or similar technologies preferred
• Experience supporting cloud deployments, CI/CD workflows, monitoring, testing, and operational readiness required
• Familiarity with enterprise architecture, security reviews, compliance requirements, and production support processes preferred
• Experience working in healthcare, enterprise software, regulated industries, or data-sensitive environments preferred
• Strong collaboration and communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences preferred
• Experience taking products from discovery through design, implementation, production deployment, and post-launch iteration preferred

Work Schedule: Hybrid, onsite 3 days/week near Centennial Park.

At HCA Healthcare, we are committed to fostering a culture of growth that allows you to build the career of a lifetime. We encourage you to apply for our Staff Design Engineer today. We review all applications promptly, and qualified candidates will be contacted to continue the process. Join us!

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.