How AmplifyMD Created a Mission-Driven Engineering Organization

AmplifyMD operates a virtual specialty care platform that embeds directly into hospital workflows, extending access to specialists across acute, outpatient, post-acute, and at-home settings. The platform makes remote providers up to 2x more efficient through EHR-integrated, AI-enhanced workflows. Backed by Forerunner Ventures, Greylock, and F-Prime, AmplifyMD has achieved significant recognition including MedTech Breakthrough awards and KLAS Emerging Company Spotlight status.

The Challenge

As a founding team of three, AmplifyMD faced the familiar startup paradox: wear every hat, move fast, find product-market fit. But scaling engineering talent in healthcare was uniquely difficult.

"Finding individuals who have experience working within healthcare or healthcare technology is really challenging. It's a smaller talent pool and there are a lot of startups and organizations competing for that talent." - Nijay Patel, CTO at AmplifyMD.

There's a steep learning curve in healthcare, understanding data workflows, regulatory compliance, security considerations. Traditional U.S. recruiting couldn't surface candidates with that specific experience at the pace and economics needed. Additionally, the founding team had limited experience with distributed hiring, making the early partner choice critical.

The Solution

An early investor, Greylock, introduced AmplifyMD to Remotely Works and pointed to strong results with other portfolio companies. What started as an experiment became a strategic foundation for the entire organization.

The difference was immediate and philosophical. Rather than contracting task-oriented developers to execute on detailed specs, we sourced engineers who could join the mission.

"The big advantage of having individuals who are really integrated into the organization and approaching their work as being part of the company and in alignment with the mission is that you can start to have a more bottom-up structure for innovation."

This meant developers who listened to sales calls, understood customer problems, and came forward with solutions. It meant a team of 20+ engineers all motivated by the shared mission, not just project deadlines.

Our geographic focus on Brazil and LATAM also solved a practical problem: finding experienced healthcare engineers who could work in overlapping time zones and integrate seamlessly with the U.S.-based team. The result was a consolidated, centralized partnership where recruiters understood AmplifyMD's culture and specific needs.

"When we do need to scale up and identify additional folks to join our team, we can move really fast. Candidates have been pretty thoroughly vetted, not just generally as developers, but specifically for our organization and culture."

Direct Impact

The distributed engineering team has been instrumental in AmplifyMD's growth trajectory. From founding through Series B, the company's product platform was built and evolved by this team, demonstrating that mission-driven, mission-aligned talent can execute at scale regardless of location.

Individual engineers have become leaders. Several contractors who joined when the company had fewer than 10 people have progressed into leadership roles within product and engineering. They understand the company's evolution, market approach, and go-to-market strategy. They hold leadership accountable on vision and direction.

"It's been amazing to see the pull from a number of those individuals to help us further refine our strategy, our narrative around that and holding expectations, holding us accountable as leaders to having a clear direction and vision and being collaborative in that process, bringing ideas forward."

This reflects genuine ownership and long-term commitment to the company's mission, the opposite of transactional consulting relationships.

Cultural Integration at Scale

AmplifyMD worried there would be friction working with a largely Brazilian and LATAM-based team. Instead, the engineers seamlessly integrated into the broader organization.

The company was intentional about culture: using tools like Donut for random peer connections, hosting on-site retreats in São Paulo, and treating everyone as full members of the organization rather than separate offshore resources.

The geographic concentration in São Paulo also created practical benefits. Experienced contractors referred colleagues, accelerating hiring and reducing onboarding friction since people who've worked together before integrate faster.

Key Results

• 20+ distributed engineers exclusively sourced through Remotely, representing the entire engineering organization
• Entire product platform built by the distributed team—from MVP through post-Series A feature expansion
• Leadership progression: Contractors evolved from individual contributors into company leaders and decision-makers
• Cultural integration: No perceived separation between U.S. and LATAM-based team members; unified culture across geography
• Specialized talent access: Successfully identified engineers with specific healthcare technology experience, addressing a critical talent gap
• Sustained growth: Team scaled from 3 to 20+ engineers without traditional recruiting overhead or integration friction

Key Learning

Hiring exclusively through Remotely Works forced AmplifyMD to think differently about talent acquisition. Rather than chasing whoever's available, the company identified what it actually needed: experienced engineers, mission-aligned, capable of deep thinking on healthcare problems.

"We don't necessarily perceive it as US based versus South America and offshore, but instead, where is the talent? Is there a good cultural fit? Is this someone we want to work with every day? Can they seamlessly communicate, engage with our customers?"

This mindset, talent first, geography second, proved more powerful than traditional location-based hiring.

For remote teams in healthcare, AmplifyMD's experience shows that regulatory concerns are surmountable. Health systems initially flagged offshore access to systems. Through whitelisting specific countries, explaining use cases, and educating customers (many of whom use offshore resources themselves), the concern became routine.

"It certainly has become much, much easier. There isn't an organization to date that we're working with that flat out prohibits that."

The company also learned that in remote-first environments, asynchronous communication and experienced developers matter more than traditional onboarding. They've intentionally hired experienced engineers rather than junior developers, letting them adapt to processes quickly rather than requiring hands-on mentorship.

Looking Ahead

As AmplifyMD scales further, the partnership with Remotely continues to evolve. The company is shifting from generalist full-stack developers to specialized expertise—AI, LLM capabilities, domain-specific healthcare technology.

Remotely's role extends beyond hiring. Regular check-ins with the engineering team provide outside perspective on culture and work environment, giving leadership visibility into team sentiment without the filter of the CTO relationship.

The challenge ahead, as the company grows from a tight-knit team to larger organization with separate functional areas, is maintaining focus and direction—not being pulled in too many directions at once. The distributed team that built everything so far will be central to solving that challenge.