Staff ML Engineer, AI Platform

ambiencehealthcare; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 250,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage

401(k) with company match

Flexible time off with no annual cap

Annual company-wide off-sites

Job summary

Ambience Healthcare in San Francisco is seeking a Software Engineer with extensive experience in ML infrastructure. You will lead the development of evaluation and release frameworks, debug tooling, and data pipelines that support the performance of clinical AI across diverse health systems.

With a hybrid work model, the engineering role allows collaboration in person three times a week. The ideal candidate will have 7+ years of software engineering experience and a background in Python or TypeScript.

Join us at Ambience to make meaningful contributions to healthcare technology and improve clinician experiences nationwide.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in software engineering, 3+ focused on ML infrastructure, platform engineering, or data systems.
• Staff-level scope: owned cross‐cutting infrastructure.
• Strong backend fundamentals in Python or TypeScript.

Responsibilities

• Build evaluation and release gates for product teams.
• Create observability tools for surface quality issues.
• Develop a chart context retrieval layer for model-ready inputs.

Skills

Software engineering

ML infrastructure

Platform engineering

Data systems

Backend fundamentals in Python

Backend fundamentals in TypeScript

Job description

About Us

Here at Ambience, we never set out to be just another scribe. We’re building the AI intelligence platform that restores humanity to healthcare and drives meaningful ROI for health systems across the country.

Our technology helps providers focus on delivering great care by removing the administrative burden that pulls them away from patients and away from their most impactful work. Ambience delivers real-time coding-aware documentation and clinical workflow support across ambulatory, emergency and inpatient settings at the top health systems in North America.

Our teams operate relentlessly with extreme ownership to build the best solutions for our health system partners. We value candor, positivity and deep thought — and we expect a lot from each other because we know the problems we’re solving truly matter.

Ambience was ranked #1 for Improving the Clinician Experience in the KLAS Research Emerging Solutions Top 20 Report, recognized by Fast Company as one of the Next Big Things in Tech, named one of the best AI companies in healthcare by Inc., and selected as a LinkedIn Top Startup in 2024 and 2025. We’re backed by Oak HC/FT, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), OpenAI Startup Fund, and Kleiner Perkins — and we’re just getting started.

The Role

Ambience ships clinical AI to millions of patient encounters across the nation's largest health systems. How fast we improve that AI depends on the platform you'll own.

You’ll build evaluation and release gates that let teams ship confidently. Observability that surfaces quality issues before clinicians do. Debug tooling that makes reproducing regressions fast. The chart context retrieval layer that assembles patient history into model-ready inputs.

The goal: teams iterate on quality in days, not weeks. Every improvement you make compounds across every product team, every quarter.

Our engineering roles are hybrid in our SF office (3x/week).

What You’ll Own

• Eval & Release Infrastructure — Automated graders and release gates that work across product pods. Unified eval dataset versioning and execution to replace fragmented workflows. Production quality monitoring with end-to-end tracing, shared metrics, and automated alerting.
• Debug Tooling — Encounter replay that reconstructs exact inference inputs (retrieved chart context, packed prompts, model versions) so teams reproduce issues without digging through logs. Diff views comparing known‑good runs to regressions.
• Chart Context & Data Pipelines — The retrieval layer that pulls relevant patient history and assembles it into consistent model‑ready inputs. Feedback loops that capture real‑world usage and convert it into training signal. End-to-end latency instrumentation across every workflow step.
• Preference Infrastructure — The system that enables clinician and site‑specific behavior across specialties. Different clinics want different defaults, different phrasing, different workflows. You’ll build the platform that supports customization at scale.
• Model Serving — Performance and reliability layer for critical in‑house models with clear SLOs, capacity planning, and regression alerts.

Who You Are

• 7+ years in software engineering, 3+ focused on ML infrastructure, platform engineering, or data systems
• Staff-level scope: owned cross‑cutting infrastructure, influenced technical direction across multiple teams
• Strong backend fundamentals in Python, TypeScript, or similar
• Built eval systems, data pipelines, or ML observability infrastructure
• Comfortable on both the ML and Eng sides of MLOps
• Track record of platform work that measurably accelerated other teams
• In SF, 3x/week in‑person

Why Here

Healthcare data is messy, customer‑specific, and high‑stakes. FHIR resources mutate in undocumented ways. Every health system has different mappings. Context windows hit 100K tokens. You’re figuring out how to give models the right context for millions of patient encounters across dozens of specialties.

Small team, high trust, direct access to leadership. Staff engineers here shape technical direction, not just execute on it.

Pay Transparency

We offer a base compensation range of approximately $250,000-300,000 per year, exclusive of equity. This intentionally broad range provides flexibility for candidates to tailor their cash and equity mix based on individual preferences. Our compensation philosophy prioritizes meaningful equity grants, enabling team members to share directly in the impact they help create.

Are you outside of the range? We encourage you to still apply: we take an individualized approach to ensure that compensation accounts for all of the life factors that matter for each candidate.

Life at Ambience

Working at Ambience means opting into a high‑ownership, high‑trust environment built for people who want to grow fast, operate decisively and focus on work that matters. This could be the right place for you if you want to

• Work on mission‑critical AI technology that directly improves clinicians’ day‑to‑day lives and health system financial health across some of the most complex, high‑stakes workflows in the world.
• Join a “dream team” culture where we hire exceptional people, expect exceptional outcomes and invest deeply in feedback and continuous growth. We operate as a championship team, and that means being ok with hard, uncomfortable, ambiguous problems that lead to real greatness.
• Operate with real ownership and accountability in an environment where there are no bystanders: If something is broken, we fix it! You will have meaningful autonomy and be expected to drive work to completion.

To help you do your best work, we pair these expectations with benefits intentionally designed to help you feel supported and safe at Ambience and beyond. Some of our key benefits include

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents
• 401(k) with a company match of up to 3% of base salary
• A remote‑friendly culture (with a San Francisco HQ) and full equipment provisioning to ensure you can work effectively from wherever you’re based.
• Parental leave to support your family needs
• Annual company‑wide off‑sites, team off‑sites and regular team lunches and all‑hands gatherings, with travel, lodging and meals covered
• Flexible time off with no annual cap, company‑wide holidays and an annual holiday shutdown from December 24–January 1 designed to support real rest and long‑term sustainability.

Ambience Healthcare is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply.

Ambience is committed to supporting every candidate’s ability to fully participate in our hiring process. If you need any accommodations during your application or interviews, please reach out to our Recruiting team at [e-mail]. We’ll handle your request confidentially and work with you to ensure an accessible and equitable experience for all candidates.

Ambience Healthcare has become aware of scams targeting jobseekers with fake jobs and even interviewing people. Our emails will always come from @ambiencehealthcare.com. We would never ask candidates to download apps or make any form of payment(s). If you are contacted through WhatsApp, Telegram, similar but fake email domains, or asked to make a payment, these contacts are not legitimate. Report the issue immediately to LinkedIn and the FBI.