Principal AI/ML Applied Scientist (Hybrid)

Organizational Overview:

Global Health Labs (GH Labs) is a mission-driven organization created by Gates Ventures to develop innovative solutions to address unmet needs in primary healthcare. GH Labs serves as a Center of Excellence for primary healthcare devices and tools, and in collaboration with the Gates Foundation, focuses on improving health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) through innovative technology and in-country partnerships.

 

Driven by a team of engineers, scientists, clinicians, researchers, product managers, and global health experts, GH Labs evaluates primary care products, identifies gaps, and develops solutions with global partners. We deliver results by focusing on practical, scalable innovations that make healthcare more accessible and effective in LMICs.

 

 

Global Health Labs is seeking mission-oriented colleagues. We are considering outstanding candidates for this high-impact role to support our primary care portfolio.

 

Role Summary:

Given our mission to become a recognized center of excellence in primary care, we are establishing a team focused on accelerating the development and delivery of our product portfolio with responsible and clinically rigorous validation, to needed geographies around the world. This is a high impact role with an emphasis on serving patients and providers with effective, equitable, reliable tools that leverage the SOTA in devices, sensors, diagnostics and AI to improve health outcomes.

The Principal AI/ML Applied Scientist will work closely with the Technical Product Management and Software Engineering to align on requirements and co-develop solutions with partners. You will leverage your deep expertise in AI/ML model development and deployment to architect and guide approaches for building robust, high-performance models optimized for low-cost devices. You will play a key role in ensuring that these models are efficient, scalable, and impactful in primary care settings.

 

All products undergo thorough clinical validation adhering to local regulatory requirements, which may include approvals from bodies like the US FDA or other relevant country-specific agencies. We ensure that product costs are designed to be affordable and sustainable within local healthcare systems. Through partnerships with global, mid-size, and local companies, we ensure these innovations are accessible and impactful where they are needed most.

 

Please note: As part of the interview process, you will be asked to complete a technical exercise focused on model development, optimization, and deployment.

 

Key Duties & Responsibilities

• AI/ML Technical Leadership: Spearhead AI/ML engineering initiatives, focusing on production-ready code, scalability, and optimal performance. Guide partner projects to meet or exceed industry standards.
• Strategic Project Management: Develop comprehensive RFPs, collaborate and ideate with partners, and oversee project execution. Make informed build vs. buy decisions, balancing cost-effectiveness with scalability and performance requirements.
• Cloud and Mobile Solution Architecture: Design and implement robust cloud and mobile applications, tailored for healthcare needs in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).
• Performance Monitoring and Reporting: Collaborate with Technical Product Management to integrate key metrics into stakeholder updates, ensuring transparent project status and progress tracking.
• Collaborative Development Oversight: Manage shared code repositories with partners, enforcing code quality standards and best practices across all development efforts.
• Deployment and Integration Leadership: Direct software builds and deployments, ensuring partner solutions are secure, well-architected, and optimized for performance.
• Quality Assurance: Implement and maintain rigorous testing protocols, automated pipelines, and continuous integration practices to ensure scalable and maintainable solutions.
• Cross-team Coordination: Facilitate seamless collaboration between AI/ML, device, and data teams, aligning efforts with product goals and fostering clear inter-team communication.

 

Required Skills and Experience:

• MS in Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering, with expertise in building, optimizing, and deploying scalable AI models on low-cost devices, ensuring performance, robustness, and cost-efficiency.
• 3+ years of experience packaging and productionizing commercial AI/ML applications with a strong understanding of scalability, performance, and cost management. Preferably on edge devices.
• Experience leading cross-functional collaborations with partners.
• Expertise in evaluating models based on clinical utility, ensuring that models meet real-world healthcare needs and demonstrate tangible clinical impact in primary care settings.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, capable of articulating complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.
• Ability to thrive in ambiguous environments and adapt to changing priorities.
• This role requires regular communication with teams across multiple time zones. Candidates must be available for early morning or late evening calls, typically between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM PST or 7:00 PM and 10:00 PM PST, up to 2-3 times per week, as needed.

 

Preferred Skills and Experience:

• Experience working with small language models on mobile phones or edge devices heavily preferred.
• Experience working with multi-modal health data (time series data from sensors, imaging, clinical).
• Experience with health-data and an understanding of data governance, security and privacy issues in healthcare.
• Familiarity with clinical informatics (syntactic and semantic normalization, ontologies) highly desirable.
• Experience with UI-UX for AI products, a plus.
• Experience with implementing solutions for Low Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).
• Strong background in early-stage product development (0-1 experience) is highly desirable.

 

Required Competencies:

GH Labs Success Factors: We believe there are a few prioritized key capabilities and behaviors that are critical to success for all roles at GH Labs.

• Demonstrates Collaboration: Actively listens and works with others openly and transparently to create an environment where diverse viewpoints are valued, and information is shared for the purposes of solving problems and achieving collective goals. Seeks collaborative solutions as the best path to sustainable change.
• Accelerates Impact: Takes risks, proves/disproves concepts quickly and with a growth mindset, solves creatively, and partners strategically to achieve results and deliver impact on GH Labs mission.
• Promotes Accountability: Holds self and others accountable so that success is celebrated, and failure is understood and addressed.
• Establishes Trust: Interacts, shares, and receives information and feedback in a way that builds trust and gains the confidence of others.

 

Pay & Benefits:

GH Labs is committed to paying employees equitably for substantially similar work. A reasonable estimate of the current salary range for this position is $208,000 to $325,000. We aim to hire new employees between $208,000 to $260,000. allowing future compensation growth within the range based on aptitude in the role and context, and progress and performance against goals over time.

 

We believe that our employees are the reason for our success. GH Labs proudly supports our employees and their families with a comprehensive fully paid benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, life, AD&D, long-term disability insurance, and a generous employer match to 401(k) retirement savings contributions. Employees receive flexible time off, thirteen paid holidays, and generous paid parental and family leave. Our benefits also include several employee wellness programs, mental health resources, and a substantial charitable giving match.

 

Equal Opportunity Statement:

GH Labs is committed to being an inclusive, equitable and positive workplace, where all employees thrive personally and professionally. 

We believe our workforce should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we work to serve.

We also believe in the research that demonstrates diverse groups – including groups diverse in experience and opinion – are more innovative than homogenous ones.

As such, diversity is a key pillar of our employment practices, and every applicant and employee drawn to serve the mission of GH Labs will be welcomed and will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, gender identity, color, gender expression, age, national origin, religion, genetic information, pregnancy status, veteran status, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, prior protected activity, disability, and any other basis protected by law.

 

Export Controls:

This role may include access to technology and/or software source code that is subject to U.S. export control requirements under the ITAR or the EAR.