Head of Applied AI

Ensemble Health Partners; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

Retirement benefits

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Ensemble Health Partners seeks a Head of Applied AI in Austin to lead the AI application practice for Orchestration Works, guiding model development, prompts, and governance across revenue-cycle workflows.

You will coordinate with the AI organization, ensure safety standards, and drive real-world adoption while mentoring AI engineers and scientists in a collaborative, high-impact environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of AI/ML leadership experience.
• Track record shipping applied AI into production with measurable business outcomes.
• Experience with enterprise AI platforms, evaluation frameworks, and safety guardrails.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead AI application practice across pods.
• Apply platform capabilities to prioritized revenue cycle problems.
• Oversee initiative-specific tuning and evaluation of models.
• Ensure AI initiatives meet enterprise safety and evaluation standards.

Skills

AI leadership

Applied AI

Enterprise AI platform

Education

Advanced degree in CS/AI

Tools

Large language models

Agentic architectures

Retrieval augmented generation

Prompt engineering

Fine-tuning

Evaluation frameworks

Job description

Thank you for considering a career at Ensemble! Ensemble is a leading provider of technology-enabled revenue cycle management solutions for health systems, including hospitals and affiliated physician groups. They offer end-to-end revenue cycle solutions as well as a comprehensive suite of point solutions to clients across the country. Ensemble keeps communities healthy by keeping hospitals healthy. We recognize that healthcare requires a human touch, and we believe that every touch should be meaningful. This is why our people are the most important part of who we are. By empowering them to challenge the status quo, we know they will be the difference!

O.N.E Purpose

Customer Obsession: Consistently provide exceptional experiences for our clients, patients, and colleagues by understanding their needs and exceeding their expectations.

Embracing New Ideas: Continuously innovate by embracing emerging technology and fostering a culture of creativity and experimentation.

Striving for Excellence: Execute at a high level by demonstrating our “Best in KLAS” Ensemble Difference Principles and consistently delivering outstanding results.

The Opportunity

Welcome to Orchestration Works — Ensemble's bold leap into the future of healthcare innovation. We're building something big. Orchestration Works is a brand-new division designed to move fast, break barriers, and bring cutting-edge technology like AI and automation to life across the healthcare revenue cycle. This is where ideas don't just get tested — they get scaled. Our mission is simple: transform how we work, deliver next-level results for our clients, and lead the industry into tomorrow.

Why Orchestration Works Exists

Healthcare is changing at warp speed. To stay ahead, we're taking R+D out of the lab and putting it into real operations — quickly, intelligently, and boldly. This new division gives us the freedom and focus to experiment, learn, and deploy innovations that make a measurable impact.

What Makes It Different

A dedicated R+D powerhouse: A 50-person independent team headquartered in Austin, Texas — built to move at startup speed.

Real autonomy: Independent leadership, resources, and decision-making authority that lets us innovate without friction.

A laser focus: Revenue Cycle Management innovations powered by automation, AI, and reimagined processes — including work on advanced Administrative and Clinical Reasoning Models.

A future-ready mindset: We're here to help Ensemble evolve rapidly while protecting what makes us exceptional.

Why It Matters

The future of healthcare isn't waiting — and neither are we. Orchestration Works positions Ensemble to stay ahead of industry shifts, unlock new performance breakthroughs, and deliver smarter, faster, more reliable results for the organizations we serve.

Position Overview

The Head of Applied AI owns AI application practice for Orchestration Works: the discipline of embedding advanced AI in specific operational and clinical revenue cycle workflows and proving it works on real work. The division of labor is clean — if a capability is reusable across many applications, it is platform work and lives with Ensemble's AI organization; if it solves a specific operational or clinical problem, it is application work and it flows through OW.

This role owns the application side of that boundary and is the interface to the AI organization. OW consumes the enterprise AI Platform — foundation models, ontologies, retrieval infrastructure, training pipelines, and shared agentic frameworks — and pulls it forward through real operational demand.

It does not duplicate it, and it maintains no parallel model relationships.

Within the platform, OW experiments freely: application patterns, prompts, agent designs, and initiative-specific fine-tuning.

The Head of Applied AI sets that practice, leads it hands-on across pods, and ensures every initiative conforms to enterprise AI safety and evaluation standards.

What You’ll Own

• AI application practice: The standard for how pods design and build workflow-specific reasoning, prompts, agent architectures, and tool use across the portfolio.
• Applied agentic AI: Application of the platform's shared reasoning and agentic frameworks to prioritized revenue cycle problems — denials, coding, eligibility, prior authorization, and other operational and clinical workflows.
• Initiative-specific fine-tuning and evaluation: Tuning and evaluating models for specific initiatives within the platform's pipelines and evaluation standards.
• Platform consumption, not duplication: Use the AI organization's platform capabilities and drive its evolution through real operational demand — no parallel model relationships, no shadow infrastructure.
• Operator-validated AI: Partner with the Head of Operator Engagement so every AI capability is validated by front-line teammates on real workflow — in shadow, parallel, or controlled production mode — before concept lock.
• Safety and standards conformance: Per-initiative conformance to Ensemble's enterprise AI safety, evaluation standards, and guardrails.
• Technical leadership of pod AI talent: Guide the AI Engineers and Scientists seconded onto each pod; hands-on design, review, and problem-solving.

What You Bring

• Required 10+ years of AI/ML experience with progressive leadership responsibility, including leading applied AI or ML teams.
• A track record of shipping applied AI products into production — moving teams from experimentation to deployed, measurable business outcomes.
• Deep hands‑on fluency with modern AI application patterns: large language models, agentic architectures, retrieval‑augmented generation, prompt and context engineering, fine‑tuning, and evaluation.
• Experience operating within (or building on) an enterprise AI platform, including evaluation frameworks and safety guardrails.
• Cross‑functional leadership across product, engineering, and operations, with the communication skills to influence technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Preferred Healthcare or revenue cycle domain experience; familiarity with regulatory and security frameworks (HIPAA, HITRUST).
• Experience designing human‑in‑the‑loop systems or AI that works alongside front‑line operators.
• Experience with rigorous model evaluation practices, including adversarial testing and statistically sound offline evaluation.
• Advanced degree in computer science, AI/ML, or a related field.

How We Work at Orchestration Works

120 days, three gates: Every initiative moves from intake to deployment‑ready in 120 days or less, through three decision gates. Killing a concept at the gate is a legitimate, expected outcome — that is the model working, not breaking.

Multi‑hat, startup‑like team: Roles here are broader than their titles. Leaders operate hands‑on, pods rotate in and out on initiative cycles, and everyone contributes beyond their lane.

Validated on real work: Front‑line Ensemble teammates use what we build on real workflow before anything is locked. Solutions are designed around validated work, not assumption.

Built on Core: Same codebase, same CI/CD, same Ensemble engineering bar. OW proves it; Core scales it.

Co‑located in Austin

Co‑located in Austin: The dedicated team and active pod members work together in person at the OW office. Candidates must currently reside in the Austin area or be willing to relocate; relocation assistance may be available for eligible candidates.

Ensemble Health Partners is an equal opportunity employer.

Ensemble is an equal employment opportunity employer. It is our policy not to discriminate against any applicant or employee based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religion, national origin, age, disability, military or veteran status, genetic information or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws. Ensemble also prohibits harassment of applicants or employees based on any of these protected categories.

Due to business, operational, payroll, and regulatory requirements, this position is limited to individuals who reside and are authorized to work within the United States.

Applications generated from outside the United States will not be considered. Individuals may reapply when located within the United States.

Ensemble provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and applicable state and local law.

• Associate Benefits – We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support the physical, emotional, and financial health of you and your family, including healthcare, time off, retirement, and well‑being programs.
• Our Culture – Ensemble is a place where associates can do their best work and be their best selves. We put people first, last and always.
• Growth – We invest in your professional development. Each associate will earn a professional certification relevant to their field and can obtain tuition reimbursement.
• Recognition – We offer quarterly and annual incentive programs for all employees who go beyond and keep raising the bar for themselves and the company.

Join an award‑winning company Five‑time winner of “Best in KLAS” 2020‑2022, 2024‑2025 Black Book Research's Top Revenue Cycle Management Outsourcing Solution 2021‑2024 22 Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) MAP Awards for High Performance in Revenue Cycle 2019‑2024 Leader in Everest Group's RCM Operations PEAK Matrix Assessment 2024 Clarivate Healthcare Business Insights (HBI) Revenue Cycle Awards for strong performance 2020, 2022‑2023 Energage Top Workplaces USA 2022‑2024 Fortune Media Best Workplaces in Healthcare 2024 Monster Top Workplace for Remote Work 2024 Great Place to Work certified 2023‑2024 Innovation Work‑Life Flexibility Leadership Purpose + Values Bottom line, we believe in empowering people and giving them the tools and resources needed to thrive.