Staff ML Engineer (ML/AI)

Lyra Health; New York (NY); On-site; USD 161,000 - 222,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare coverage

Equity in the company

401K with matching

Monthly tech allowance

Paid parental leave

Job summary

Lyra Health in New York, NY seeks a Staff ML/AI Engineer to define and drive the architectural vision for Lyra’s machine learning and generative AI platforms. You will anchor the engineering and data organizations, architect enterprise-scale AI tech, and ensure reliable, secure, and medically precise AI products.

This role demands translating healthcare challenges into scalable platform solutions and elevating technical standards across teams.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience deploying complex ML/AI solutions into production
• Mastery of Python, RESTful API design, Protobuf, and microservices architecture
• Deep expertise with Docker, Kubernetes, container orchestration, and real-time inference services
• Experience designing and deploying RAG pipelines, fine-tuning LLMs, managing vector databases
• Cloud architecture on AWS or equivalent
• Ability to distill complex problems into strategic priorities and influence leadership

Responsibilities

• Design and execute the long-term roadmap for Lyra’s ML/AI platform
• Architect end-to-end training, fine-tuning, and low-latency inference platforms
• Establish standards for AI/ML SDLC including data lineage, CI/CD, evaluation, and monitoring
• Collaborate with Product, Data Science, Security, and Clinical leaders to map clinical goals to AI capabilities
• Mentor Senior ML Engineers and drive engineering best practices
• Lead by example with technical prototypes and strategic coding contributions
• Contribute hands-on coding to projects

Skills

Python

RESTful API design

Protobuf

microservices architecture

LLM evaluation frameworks

RAG pipelines

cloud architecture

strategic communication

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

vector databases

Celery

Kafka

Job description

About Lyra Health

Lyra Health is a leading provider of evidence-based mental health care, serving more than 20 million people globally in partnership with employers and more than 100 million through health plan and partner relationships. The company has delivered more than 15 million sessions of mental health care, published more than 35 peer-reviewed studies, and delivered unmatched outcomes in terms of access, clinical effectiveness, and cost efficiency. Extensive peer-reviewed research confirms Lyra’s transformative care model helps people recover twice as fast and results in a 26% annual reduction in overall healthcare claims costs. Lyra is transforming access to life-changing mental health care through Lyra Empower, the only fully integrated, AI-powered platform combining the highest-quality care and technology solutions.

About the Role

We are seeking a Staff ML/AI Engineer to define and drive the architectural vision for Lyra’s machine learning and generative AI technology landscape. In this role, you will serve as a technical anchor across the engineering and data organizations—architecting enterprise-scale AI platforms, setting technical strategy for high-impact AI/ML initiatives, and ensuring our AI products operate with top-tier reliability, security, and medical precision. The ideal candidate is a seasoned technical leader who excels at translating complex healthcare challenges into scalable platform solutions, building consensus across cross-functional leadership, and elevating the technical bar for the entire engineering organization.

Lyra is for you if you

• Thrive on working with brilliant teammates to solve complex, meaningful problems
• Are passionate about making a social impact and supporting people at their most challenging moments
• Enjoy cross-functional collaboration with physicians, therapists, data scientists, data analysts and product managers

Responsibilities

• Drive AI Platform Architecture: Design and execute the long-term roadmap for Lyra’s machine learning and generative AI platform, enabling fast, safe, and reliable deployment of frontier models across the company.
• Lead AI Infrastructure Vision: Architect end-to-end training, fine-tuning, and low-latency inference platforms, including centralized RAG architecture, vector databases, and enterprise evaluation/guardrail frameworks.
• Set Engineering Excellence Standards: Establish organizational standards for the full AI/ML SDLC—from dataset lineage and CI/CD pipelines to automated model evaluation, red-teaming, and production monitoring.
• Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Partner closely with Product Management, Data Science, Security, and Clinical leaders to translate strategic clinical goals into foundational AI capability roadmaps.
• Mentor and Multiply Impact: Elevate the engineering culture by mentoring Senior ML Engineers, conducting high-leverage architectural reviews, and establishing engineering best practices across teams.
• Hands-On Leadership: Lead by example through technical prototypes, critical-path architecture, and strategic coding contributions.
• And of course, you will be coding!

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience deploying complex ML/AI solutions into mission-critical production environments, with a proven track record of technical leadership.
• Deep System & Software Engineering Expertise: Mastery of Python, RESTful API design, Protobuf, and microservices architecture.
• Production AI/ML Infrastructure Mastery: Deep expertise with Docker, Kubernetes, container orchestration, and real-time inference services.
• Modern Generative AI Architecture: Hands-on experience designing and deploying RAG pipelines, fine-tuning LLMs, managing vector databases, and building robust LLM evaluation/guardrail frameworks.
• Data Layer Systems: Expertise with relational databases, low-latency key-value stores, distributed queueing system architectures (e.g., Celery, Kafka), and data pipeline orchestration.
• Cloud Architecture: Strong experience architecting cloud-native solutions on AWS (or equivalent cloud providers).
• Strategic Communication: Exceptional ability to distill highly ambiguous technical problems into clear strategic priorities and influence leadership across engineering, product, and business domain disciplines.

Preferred Qualifications

• Polyglot Engineering Background: Experience writing high-performance production code in Java or Kotlin.
• Healthcare & Sensitive Data Expertise: Experience architecting AI/ML systems within highly regulated environments (HIPAA compliance, SOC2, handling PHI/PII).
• MLOps / Platform Productization: Experience building internal developer platforms or ML tooling used by dozens of data scientists and engineers.

Salary

$161,000 - $221,500 a year

As a full-time Staff ML Engineer, you will be employed by Lyra Health, Inc. The anticipated annual base salary range for this full-time position is $161,000 to $221,500. The base range is determined by role and level, and placement within the range will depend on a number of job-related factors, including but not limited to your skills, qualifications, experience and location. This role may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses. Annual salary is only one part of an employee’s total compensation package at Lyra.

Benefits

• Comprehensive healthcare coverage (including medical, dental, vision, FSA/HSA, life and disability insurances)
• Lyra for Lyrians; coaching and therapy services
• Equity in the company through discretionary restricted stock units
• Competitive time off with pay policies including vacation, sick days, and company holidays
• Paid parental leave
• 401K with up to 3% matching
• Monthly tech allowance
• We like to spread joy throughout the year with well-being perks and activities, surprise swag, regular community celebration... and more!

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age, disability, genetic information or any other category protected by law.

Privacy Statement

By applying for this position, you acknowledge that your personal information will be processed as per the Lyra Health Workforce Privacy Notice. Through this application, to the extent permitted by law, we will collect personal information from you including, but not limited to, your name, email address, gender identity, employment information, and phone number for the purposes of recruiting and assessing suitability, aptitude, skills, qualifications, and interests for employment with Lyra. We may also collect information about your race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, which is considered sensitive personal information under the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and special category data under the UK and EU GDPR. Providing this information is optional and completely voluntary, and if you provide it you consent to Lyra processing it for the purposes as described at the point of collection, for example for diversity and inclusion initiatives. If you are a California resident and would like to limit how we use this information, please use the Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information form. This information will only be retained for as long as needed to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, as described above. Please note that Lyra does not "sell" or "share" personal information as defined by the CPRA. Outside of the United States, for example in the EU, Switzerland and the UK, you may have the right to request access to, or a copy of, your personal information, including in a portable format; request that we delete your information from our systems; object to or restrict processing of your information; or correct inaccurate or outdated personal information in our systems. These rights may be subject to legal limitations. To exercise your data privacy rights outside of the United States, please contact more information about how we use and retain your information, please see our Workforce Privacy Notice.

AI Hiring Process

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, summarizing interviews, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.