---
title: 'Head of Legal at Develop Health'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-legal-develop-health-menlo-park-x016cy6cyt2v'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-27'
---

# Head of Legal at Develop Health

- **Company:** Develop Health
- **Location:** Menlo Park, CA
- **Compensation:** $308k–$342k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-27
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/develop-health/1688da14-68e9-436f-a5b4-4d6b03b04e5e

## Job description

Develop Health is on a mission to use AI to radically accelerate access to life-saving medications. By automating complex, manual healthcare processes—like benefit verification and prior authorization— we've been growing rapidly and over the past couple of years have helped over 2.5 million patients! We’re partnering with some of the largest pharmacy benefit managers and payers in the nation, revolutionizing how healthcare interactions occur by eliminating human delays and inefficiencies. Our small, elite team of founders and engineers have previously launched and exited successful healthcare startups including Rupa Health and Canvas Medical. We are now scaling rapidly following a major funding round.

## About the role

Location: Menlo Park or San Francisco, on site 3 days a week. Reports to: CEO. We're hiring our first in-house lawyer. Develop Health sits in the middle of PBMs, providers, pharma manufacturers, payers and the patients they all serve, and each of them relies on us to treat them fairly. Your job is to keep it that way: every contract we sign, every feature we ship and every service we offer pharma has to keep us a neutral party all sides can trust. You'll report to our CEO and own legal end to end as a hands-on practitioner. For at least the first year you're the only lawyer, working with outside counsel on specialist matters. Three things define success in this role: The contracts fit together. You know our stakeholder agreements side by side, and nothing we agree with one party creates exposure with another. Product ships fast and stays compliant. You work alongside product and engineering, find the version of an idea that works, and explain the one constraint that actually matters. Legal scales without you in every deal. Templates, fallback positions and playbooks let sales and partnerships close standard deals on their own, and they know exactly when to bring you in.

## What you'll do

- Review our stakeholder agreements side by side, then fix the inconsistencies and older exposure you find.
- Take over review and redlining of contracts in flight, and set turnaround times and escalation rules.
- Build our contract templates, playbooks and fallback positions in Ironclad.
- Lead negotiations as we add new stakeholders.
- Choose and manage outside counsel for corporate, regulatory, IP and employment work, and lead the legal side of our next financing.

## What you'll bring on day 1

- You've been the lawyer a business relied on. You've owned commercial contracts end to end, in-house or as a company's go-to counsel.
- You see systems, not clauses. You notice how a term in one deal changes what's possible in another.
- You find the yes. When something is risky, you propose the version that works instead of stopping at no.
- You build so you're not the bottleneck. Templates, triage and self-serve tools come naturally to you.
- You learn fast. You've picked up an unfamiliar regulatory framework or business model quickly and put it to work.
- Clear writing. Your memos and redlines are short, plain and easy to act on.
- Admission to practice law in at least one US state.

You don't need a healthcare background. Referral-fee rules, platform neutrality and data rights show up in many industries, and we care more about how quickly you learn than what you already know. Bonus points

- Healthcare regulatory experience: fraud and abuse, HIPAA, or pharmacy and PBM regulation.
- Legal work at a marketplace or platform company with many types of customers.
- You've been a company's first legal hire before.

This might not be the right fit if

- You want to build a team right away. This is an individual-contributor role for at least the first 12 months.
- You want to litigate. If we're sued, we hire litigators. We need your judgment on when and how to escalate.
- You want to specialize. Tax, securities and patent work go to outside specialists; you manage those relationships.
- You need a lot of structure. There isn't much yet, and building it is the job.

## What we offer

- Competitive base salary ($308,000–$342,000) plus meaningful early-stage equity.
- A direct line to the CEO and ownership of a function from day one.
- Work that directly speeds up access to medication for hundreds of thousands of patients.

If you want to build the legal foundation of a company that's changing how patients get their medications, we'd love to hear from you.

## About Develop Health

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Develop Health is an insurance AI platform that automates medication prior authorization and benefit verification for healthcare providers directly within their clinical workflow.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: Menlo Park, California, United States (also listed as San Francisco, CA on LinkedIn)
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Mel van Londen (Co-Founder & CEO) and Benjamin Easton (Co-Founder & CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Healthcare Technology (Prior Authorization Automation / Insurance AI)
- **Target customers**: B2B — healthcare providers, digital health companies, and physician practices (e.g., Calibrate); integrates with EHRs like athenahealth
- **Mission or purpose**: To clear the path for medication access by automating the prior authorization lifecycle, reducing administrative burden on clinicians, and getting patients to life-changing therapy faster.

## Products & Services
- **Prescription AI Platform**: An AI-powered system that automates the entire prior authorization process. It predicts medication coverage, cost, and requirements at the point of prescribing, automates benefit verification, completes and submits correct prior authorization forms, tracks status updates, and handles denial management by drafting clinical appeals.
- **Real-time Benefit Verification**: Provides instant visibility into plan-specific medication coverage, cost, and requirements directly within the EHR workflow.
- **Denial Management and Appeals**: If a prior authorization is denied, the system independently drafts and submits comprehensive clinical appeals to defend the treatment plan.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$33.7 million** across two rounds (Pre-Seed and Series A)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Wing Venture Capital (lead, Series A), South Park Commons (lead, Pre-Seed), Afore Capital (Pre-Seed), Analog Ventures, MTech Capital. Key integration partner: athenahealth.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew **+200% year-over-year** to 22 employees. Raised a **$17.6M Series A** in late 2025. Launched a major integration with **athenahealth (athenaOne)** in December 2025. Client Calibrate reported a **70% reduction** in hands-on prior authorization time.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Deep EHR Integration**: The platform is built to be invisible to the clinician, operating entirely within existing workflows (e.g., athenaOne) without requiring extra clicks or logins.
- **End-to-End Automation**: Covers the entire medication access journey from benefit verification to submission to appeals, reducing manual work by up to 90%.
- **Proven Outcomes**: Demonstrated real-world results, including reducing approval time from one week to under one day, and a 5–7x reduction in the number of prior authorizations required per member.
- **Data Integrity & Compliance**: Maintains high standards of healthcare compliance (HIPAA, etc.) for security and privacy.

## Strategic Focus
- **Expand EHR Integrations**: Following the athenahealth integration, the company is likely focused on integrating with other major EHR platforms to reach more providers.
- **Scale Commercial Adoption**: Using the Series A funding to grow the customer base beyond early adopters (like Calibrate) into larger health systems and independent practices.
- **Deepen AI Capabilities**: Continuing to improve the AI’s ability to predict coverage and automate complex clinical evidence extraction from patient notes.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Mission**: Mission-driven work directly addressing a major cause of physician burnout (the average physician completes 43 prior authorizations per week). The team is small and growing fast.
- **Work Model**: **In-Office** (Menlo Park, CA). Employees work from a physical office.
- **Team & Growth**: A lean team of 22 with a strong technical core (29% in technical roles). High growth trajectory (+200% YoY headcount) suggests opportunities for impact and career advancement.
- **Notable Perks**: Not explicitly listed, but being an early-stage, well-funded startup (Series A) in a high-impact space typically offers significant ownership, equity, and the chance to shape the product and culture.

## Sources
1. [develophealth.ai](https://www.develophealth.ai/)
2. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/develop-health)
3. [CB Insights](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/develop-health)
4. [Built In](https://builtin.com/company/develop-health)
5. [Ashby Careers](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/develop-health)

## Other roles at Develop Health

- [Sales Development Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-development-manager-develop-health-salt-lake-city-jmt48pem2qxe) — Salt Lake City, UT
- [Sales Development Representative](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-development-representative-develop-health-salt-lake-city-az9d17jes6ey) — Salt Lake City, UT
- [Senior Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-develop-health-menlo-park-j5ymaahfd8c1) — Menlo Park, CA
- [Staff Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-develop-health-san-francisco-vgqy2fq7wv7a) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Full Stack Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-full-stack-engineer-develop-health-san-francisco-6jpngke4hgj6) — San Francisco, CA
- [Head of Provider Growth](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-provider-growth-develop-health-san-francisco-rs6tknctx2fa) — San Francisco, CA
- [Customer Success Manager (Digital Health & Pharmacy)](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-success-manager-digital-health-pharmacy-develop-health-san-francisco-p1bvn3t4n7ad) — San Francisco, CA
- [Strategic Customer Success Manager (Digital Health & Pharmacy)](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-customer-success-manager-digital-health-pharmacy-develop-health-san-2x651mxay2eg) — San Francisco, CA
- [Staff Product Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-product-engineer-develop-health-san-francisco-1gwk9nv4rff8) — San Francisco, CA
- [Lead Analytics Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-analytics-engineer-develop-health-san-francisco-hcn55yny7zah) — San Francisco, CA