Staff AI Scientist, Foundation Models

Tempus AI, Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 220,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Incentive compensation

Restricted stock units

Medical benefits

Job summary

Tempus AI, Inc. seeks a Staff AI Scientist, Foundation Models, to lead development of large-scale foundation models for precision medicine. The role blends ML research with clinical science, leveraging extensive clinical and molecular data to enable prognostic and biomarker applications.

You will publish findings, guide architecture choices, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to meet healthcare regulatory standards. Based in New York, strong Python and PyTorch skills are required.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computer Science or related quantitative field.
• 3+ years of industry experience delivering ML models from research to production.
• Expertise in large-scale deep learning and foundation models; multimodal data preferred.
• Publications in ML/NLP/CV venues; medical/healthcare AI experience valued.

Responsibilities

• Provide senior technical contributions shaping model architecture and roadmap.
• Design, train, and advance foundation models using clinical and molecular data.
• Develop model-derived applications for prognosis, outcomes, and stratification.
• Publish research findings and engage with the AI research community.
• Ensure regulatory and quality standards for healthcare AI products.

Skills

Python

Deep learning

Multimodal learning

NLP

Computer vision

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Tools

PyTorch

Job description

Passionate about precision medicine and advancing the healthcare industry? Recent advancements in underlying technology have finally made it possible for AI to impact clinical care in a meaningful way. Tempus' proprietary platform connects an entire ecosystem of real-world evidence to deliver real-time, actionable insights to physicians, providing critical information about the right treatments for the right patients, at the right time. At Tempus, we are pursuing a mission to redefine precision medicine through data-driven insights. The Foundation Model group is a multidisciplinary team of AI scientists and engineers developing foundation models across diverse clinical and molecular modalities, including longitudinal patient data, pathology, genomics, and other biomedical data. Our goal is to build generalizable AI representations and models that can power applications across clinical care, biomedical research, and the drug development lifecycle. As a Staff AI Scientist, Foundation Models, you will be a senior individual contributor focused on advancing large-scale foundation models for precision medicine. You will work at the intersection of machine learning, clinical science, and life sciences, developing novel models using one of the world’s largest clinical and molecular datasets and translating them into impactful applications across clinical research, drug development, and partner programs.

Key Responsibilities:

• Technical Leadership: Serve as a senior individual contributor within the foundation model team, providing strong hands‑on technical contributions while helping shape model architecture, research direction, and execution. Work closely with scientists and engineers to take ambitious AI technologies from research through validation and deployment.
• Foundation Model Research: Design, train, and advance state‑of‑the‑art foundation models across large‑scale multimodal clinical and molecular data, including longitudinal patient records, pathology, genomics, and related biomedical modalities. Drive innovation in areas such as pretraining, representation learning, self‑supervised learning, multimodal learning, model scaling, and post‑training.
• Foundation Model Applications: Develop and adapt foundation‑model‑derived models for downstream clinical and life sciences applications, including prognosis, treatment outcome prediction, patient stratification, biomarker discovery, clinical trial applications, and partner‑specific AI solutions.
• Scientific Leadership: Contribute original ideas that advance Tempus’ foundation model research agenda, publish impactful research, and engage with the broader AI research community.
• Regulatory and Product Alignment: Work with cross‑functional teams to ensure models and AI products meet appropriate quality, validation, and regulatory standards for healthcare and life sciences applications.

Qualifications:

• Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science, or a related quantitative field.
• Professional Experience: 3+ years of industry experience driving end‑to‑end development of machine learning models, from research and experimentation to validation and production deployment.
• Domain Expertise: Demonstrated expertise in large‑scale deep learning and foundation model development is required, including experience in areas such as pretraining, representation learning, self‑supervised learning, multimodal modeling, or post‑training. Experience with computer vision, NLP, pathology, longitudinal EHR, genomics, or other biomedical modalities is preferred. Prior work in medical or healthcare AI is highly valued but not required.
• Research Excellence: A strong track record of original, high‑impact research demonstrated through peer‑reviewed publications in leading machine learning, computer vision, NLP, or related AI venues is required. Publications in medical or healthcare AI and prior experience developing foundation models are strongly preferred.
• Engineering Excellence: Proficiency in Python and the modern deep learning stack (e.g. Pytorch). Strong product‑level coding skills for model development are essential, along with a solid understanding of industry‑standard software engineering and development practices.

New York Pay Range - $220,000 - $260,000 USD The expected salary range may vary for other locations. Actual salary may vary based on qualifications and experience.

Tempus offers a full range of benefits, which may include incentive compensation, restricted stock units, medical and other benefits depending on the position.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Tempus was founded in August of 2015 by Eric Lefkofsky, after his wife was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Shortly after he founded the company in an effort to bring the power of technology and artificial intelligence to cancer care, he convinced Ryan Fukushima to join as the company’s first employee. Ryan and Eric began assembling a world class team, focused on building the first version of a platform capable of ingesting real time healthcare data in an effort to personalize diagnostics. We built the platform for oncology and have expanded it to neuropsychiatry, cardiology, infectious disease (through COVID), and radiology. Despite our rapid growth, our mission remains the same—to help make sure patients are on the right drug at the right time, so they can live longer and healthier lives. We’re looking for people who can change the world. Who question the status quo and don’t shy away from tough problems. For the builders who are never done building and the learners who are never done learning. We’re looking for passionate people with undying curiosity. Those who want to attack one of the most challenging problems mankind has ever faced. Head on.