Sr. Machine Learning Researcher

About AKASA

AKASA is the preeminent provider of generative AI solutions for the healthcare revenue cycle. The company has raised more than $205M in funding from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, BOND, and Costanoa Ventures. 

Named one of the fastest-growing GenAI startups to watch by AIM Research, we’re solving the biggest challenges in the financial infrastructure of healthcare. Transaction volume through the AKASA Platform has grown consistently, with a ~2.5x year-over-year increase in the last year. The AKASA customer base represents more than $90B in net patient revenue and includes the most innovative health systems in the country, like Stanford and Johns Hopkins.    

Our founding team includes Silicon Valley leaders who have founded or been founding team members of multiple companies with successful exits. Our CEO was ranked among the “Top 50 Healthcare Technology CEOs” by the Healthcare Technology Report. We have been recognized as one of “America’s Best Startup Employers” by Forbes, “Most Innovative Digital Health Startups” by CB Insights, “Best Companies for Remote Workers” by Quartz, and “Best Places to Work” by Fortune, Modern Healthcare, and Built-In, along with being certified as a “Great Place to Work” for the past four years in a row. 

Learn more at www.AKASA.com.  

We are building the future of healthcare with AI. Everyone is welcome. As an inclusive workplace, we are committed to building an environment where our employees are comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work.  

Join us!

About the Role

As a Senior Machine Learning Researcher at AKASA, you’ll play a crucial role in pioneering advanced AI solutions that are transforming healthcare. You’ll collaborate closely with a talented team of PhD researchers, ML engineers, and healthcare experts to create models that directly enhance human efficiency and precision in complex operational workflows across the healthcare system. Our mission is to empower healthcare professionals with tools that amplify their capabilities, making them faster, more comprehensive, and more effective in their roles.

At AKASA, our research and development balance cutting-edge LLM innovation with practical impact on healthcare operations. You’ll contribute to developing and adapting advanced language models, including pretraining and fine-tuning work on architectures like Llama. In this role, you’ll work end-to-end on model design, data creation, training, evaluation, and iteration, ensuring that your research advances not only our models but also the real-world tasks they support. You’ll have the opportunity to influence new research directions, support high-impact publications, and contribute directly to AKASA’s product offerings, bringing your work to life in tools used across healthcare systems.

This is a US-based remote position with significant opportunities to impact healthcare through rigorous ML research and product innovation. We welcome candidates eager to advance AI’s role in healthcare within a collaborative, mission-driven environment.

What You'll Do

• Drive Applied Research: Lead the design, training, and evaluation of large language models to solve healthcare-specific challenges, advancing the state of the art in clinical Natural Language Understanding. 

• Leverage Human-in-the-Loop Feedback: Work closely with cross-functional teams to integrate Human-in-the-Loop data, using it to guide model improvements and explore new methods for optimizing performance.

• Collaborate Across Teams: Partner with healthcare experts and other stakeholders to integrate qualitative insights, ensuring models align with real-world needs and deliver meaningful results.

• Stay on the Cutting Edge: Regularly evaluate advancements in ML to determine their relevance to our work, maintaining AKASA’s leading edge in responsible, high-impact healthcare AI.

• Contribute to Broader Impact: Publish and share research findings in the broader AI community, helping to advance healthcare applications of AI through peer-reviewed publications.

Skills & Qualifications

• A passion for tackling meaningful healthcare challenges and leveraging AI to make a positive impact on the healthcare system.

• Proven experience training and fine-tuning large language models, with expertise in model architecture, optimization techniques, and performance evaluation. Experience with modeling in the healthcare domain, clinical natural language understanding, and healthcare data and data standards (e.g., EDI, FHIR) is strongly preferred.

• Ph.D. or equivalent industry experience in fields related to machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, computer science, electrical engineering, statistics, mathematics, optimization, or data science, plus 2-3 years of experience. Peer-reviewed publications in top AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ACL, NAACL, and EMNLP) strongly preferred.

• Strong programming skills in Python, with proficiency in deep learning frameworks and tools such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, PyTorch Lightning, Hugging Face Transformers, and Kubernetes/Kubeflow, as well as experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP) and multi-GPU environments. 

• A track record of translating research into real-world applications, with experience in rapid prototyping, experimentation, and writing production-ready code.

• Ability to work effectively in a cross-functional, fast-paced environment, with strong written and verbal communication skills.

What We Offer

• Unlimited paid time off (PTO)

• Expansive coverage for health, dental, and vision

• Employer contribution to Health Savings Accounts (HSA)

• Generous parental leave policy

• Full employee coverage for life insurance

• Company-paid holidays

• 401(K) plan

Compensation

• Based on market data and other factors, the salary range for this position is $175,000-$230,000 + Equity. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

The above represents the expected salary range for this job requisition. Ultimately, in determining your pay, we'll consider your location, experience, and other job-related factors.

We’re committed to doing the best work of our lives, together. Come see if we're the right team for you.

AKASA is a proud equal opportunity employer and we believe that a diverse and inclusive workforce is an imperative. We welcome people of different backgrounds, genders, races, ethnicities, abilities, sexual orientations, and perspectives, just to name a few. We do not discriminate based upon any protected class and we encourage candidates of all identities and backgrounds to apply. AKASA considers qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

AKASA is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at recruiting@akasa.com.