Chalise Grogan
Senior Engineering Manager
15+ years building scalable consumer products across consumer health, genomics, and edtech for platforms serving millions
15+ years building scalable consumer products across consumer health, genomics, and edtech for platforms serving millions
I'm an engineering leader who cares most about building things that genuinely help people, which is why I've spent my career at mission-driven companies: mental healthcare, genomics, education. Over 15+ years I've built scalable consumer products and led technical teams through 0-1 initiatives, and I've ended up deep in the front door of consumer products: registration, login, onboarding, checkout, and the experimentation that makes all of it work better. I've shipped products used by millions - from personalized genetics tools at 23andMe to mental health platforms serving 170M+ lives - and I'm at my best when technical depth and people leadership intersect.
Based in California, I'm currently a Senior Engineering Manager leading top-of-funnel growth engineering at Spring Health, a $3.3B mental health platform approaching $1B in revenue and covering 170M+ lives following its acquisition of Alma. I launched Spring Health's first direct-to-consumer product, built an organic acquisition channel from zero, and helped shape the company's AI-assisted engineering practices as part of its org-wide AI Pilot. I care deeply about helping engineers grow, building inclusive team cultures, and delivering high-quality work that makes a real difference in people's lives.
Joined Spring Health as Senior Engineering Manager, initially leading the Go-To-Market engineering team for a stealth 0-1 initiative expanding Spring Health's B2B mental health platform - now a $3.3B company approaching $1B in revenue and covering 170M+ lives following its acquisition of Alma - into a direct-to-consumer product. Transitioned in Jan 2026 to Sr. Engineering Manager for the Top of Funnel team, owning the full critical path of the member journey: registration, authentication, onboarding, and provider matching. Currently lead engineering for the expanded unified member experience, rebuilding provider discovery and top-of-funnel flows across both platforms.
DTC product launch (2025): Built the team from scratch for the DTC product line - hiring, culture, and technical direction - scaling a 7-person engineering team from 0 to 1 across the full stack (Ruby on Rails, NextJS, React). Personally hired 7 senior engineers across two pods, including identifying and hiring the founding team of a sibling pod before its engineering manager was seated; promoted 2 engineers and developed an AI-assisted hiring workflow (custom hiring manager skills integrated with BrightHire, including automated post-interview feedback on my own interviewing). Designed HIPAA-compliant security and privacy architecture for General Availability. Launched Connect, Spring Health's first direct-to-consumer product, with a public provider directory, signup flows, real-time insurance eligibility verification, and cost estimation. Created a technical SEO program (dynamic sitemaps, canonical URLs, page optimization) that took a new subdomain (connect.springhealth.com) from no organic presence to a programmatic surface of 40K+ indexed pages within its first year, with no paid spend, establishing organic acquisition as a growth channel. Shipped a conversational AI provider matching tool helping users find therapists by cultural fit, care preferences, and therapy style.
Top of Funnel (Jan 2026 - Present): Leads the team responsible for how millions of people discover and access mental healthcare for the first time, working across product, design, and data to deliver intuitive, reliable experiences at scale. The team owns an activation funnel processing hundreds of thousands of new member registrations annually, with roughly three quarters of new accounts completing their initial clinical assessment. Partnered with product and design to deliver the pod's experimentation program (Eppo, LaunchDarkly, Mixpanel), shipping ten experiments with measured post-test reads in H1 2026 across registration, provider browse, and lifecycle re-engagement, including two statistically significant lifecycle re-engagement wins. All shipped under HIPAA and privacy-review constraints, coordinating test collisions across pods. Rearchitected the highest-traffic registration funnel, replacing a race-prone global state machine (API-driven redirects and rerenders) with route-based React architecture - building the product case to prioritize the work, eliminating a class of funnel-breaking failures, and reducing bug volume and triage load.
AI & compliance leadership: Selected for the org-wide AI Pilot spanning engineering, product, and R&D, refining Spring Health's implementations of AI agents, workflows, and skills; standardized AI-assisted development on my team (Claude Code, structured agentic workflows, automated ticket triage) with practices adopted beyond the pod. Built custom CIPA/GDPR/CCPA tracking and cookie compliance skills deployed across every consumer-facing web repo plus marketing web, and partnered with Legal/Privacy on CIPA remediation spanning all consumer-facing domains across marketing, sales, engineering, customer success, and care support.
Led monetization engineering for 4 years (team of up to 10), owning the platform's full purchase and subscription funnel: kit checkout, subscription purchase, and every in-product upsell surface including modals, settings, and in-product landing and comparison pages.
Senior Engineering Manager (Apr 2023 - Mar 2025): Managed a team of up to 10 engineers delivering Total Health premium product, commerce, and access control systems including FDA Medical Device compliance. Built and launched subscription commerce from zero for Total Health, the company's new premium service: Braintree payments, access control and entitlements, user provisioning, and subscription management infrastructure on distributed systems architecture. Designed a self-initiated audit framework that surfaced significant previously undetected financial exposure across the subscription billing system, leading a cross-functional initiative to resolve systemic issues in payment processing and user provisioning and protecting subscription revenue integrity. Owned experiment delivery across checkout and upsell surfaces, shipping A/B tests for product and marketing on Optimizely and an internal feature flagging service, instrumented with Mixpanel. Supported security incident remediation efforts across consumer-facing systems.
Engineering Manager (2021-2023): Owned the email service powering lifecycle and transactional retention messaging; built data synchronization between monolith and email service in Python/Django, implemented opt-in/opt-out preference management, built new template infrastructure, and managed deliverability and IP/domain reputation. Migrated CI/CD pipeline from Bitbucket to GitHub Actions, reducing operational complexity and costs. Supported subscription management using Braintree payments, Celery task queues, and distributed systems. Established mentorship and career progression frameworks while staying hands-on in email and design system architecture.
Senior Software Engineer (2018-2021): Frontend lead on 23andMe's first personalized behavior change product: a recommendation system integrating genetic risk factors with environmental data through research-based predictive models to deliver actionable health insights (Python, Django, React); shipped to production. Co-led development of the company's first modular design system with automated accessibility validation.
Lead Web Application Developer (2016-2018): Led technical architecture and frontend engineering for a literacy education platform serving 500K daily sessions, leading a 5-person web application team planning and delivering core platform features. Designed and built a centralized teacher dashboard from scratch using React and Redux, including a reusable component library adopted platform-wide. Architected real-time student activity tracking with Redux state management and a Python/Django backend, enabling live teacher insights and intervention workflows. Established front-end engineering standards: code review process, style guides, test coverage requirements, and automated testing pipeline.
Senior Web Developer (2015-2016): Helped build the new front-end stack for the literacy EdTech startup, designed modular teacher homepage, and created a new in-app ad model.
Senior Developer (2014-2015): Built and led the Commerce service handling all order creation and processing for the event booking marketplace. Led simultaneous development of two Android applications, including a 0-1 app for product-market fit testing.
Web Application Developer (2012-2014): Redesigned and implemented a MVC REST API, migrating business logic from stored procedures to C#, achieving a 90% reduction in server processing time. Rebuilt the public-facing website from Classic ASP to .NET, including a custom CMS and Lucene-based content search.
Built high-visibility PHP/MySQL web applications for university systems including student orientation and housing. Led product, project, and engineering work for Computing & Network Services.
Full-tier IT support; managed backup infrastructure, maintained Classic ASP apps, handled device installs, network cabling, and server room operations.
Support Services Technician (2008-2010) and Teaching/Research Assistant (Fall 2010): hardware support for faculty and staff, research synthesis, test grading, and student mentorship.