Staff ML Research Scientist

Rad AI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive Medical, Dental, Vision & Life insurance

HSA (with employer match)

401(k)

Flexible PTO policy

Annual equipment stipend

Job summary

Rad AI is looking for a Staff Machine Learning Research Scientist in San Francisco to lead applied research in NLP and clinical AI. This role involves translating foundational research into production-scale systems enhancing healthcare outcomes. The ideal candidate will have at least 7 years of research experience, a robust understanding of LLMs, NLP, and modern ML tools like PyTorch. A competitive compensation package ranges from $190K to $260K, along with comprehensive benefits including medical and dental insurance, 401(k), and more.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of applied ML research experience or equivalent.
• Depth in areas such as LLMs, NLP, computer vision, or retrieval.
• Proven ability to take models to production.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end applied research and translate it into production.
• Set technical direction and run ablations that change product decisions.
• Partner with engineering and product to align success criteria.

Skills

Applied ML research experience

Collaborative communication

Experimental rigor

Education

MS or PhD in relevant field

Tools

PyTorch

MLflow

Databricks

Job description

About Rad AI

At Rad AI, we’re on a mission to transform healthcare with artificial intelligence. Founded by a radiologist, our AI‑driven solutions are revolutionizing radiology—saving time, reducing burnout, and improving patient care. With one of the largest proprietary radiology report datasets in the world, our AI has helped uncover hundreds of new cancer diagnoses and reduced error rates in tens of millions of radiology reports by nearly 50%.
Rad AI has secured over $140M in funding, including a recently oversubscribed Series C ($68M round) led by Transformation Capital, bringing our valuation to $528M. Our investors include Khosla Ventures, World Innovation Lab, Gradient Ventures, Cone Health Ventures, and others—all backing our mission to empower physicians with cutting‑edge AI.
Our latest advancements in generative AI are used by thousands of radiologists daily, supporting more than one‑third of radiology groups and healthcare systems and nearly 50% of all medical imaging in the U.S. at partners including Cone Health, Jefferson Einstein Health, Geisinger, Guthrie Healthcare System, and Henry Ford Health.
Recognized as one of the most promising healthcare AI companies by CB Insights and AuntMinnie, and ranked by Deloitte as the 19th fastest‑growing company in North America, we are building AI‑powered solutions that make a real impact. Most recently, Rad AI was named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list, highlighting the innovation and momentum behind our mission.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Staff Machine Learning Research Scientist to help define and drive Rad AI's next‑generation applied research in NLP and clinical AI. The role works across LLMs, retrieval, representation learning, speech, and multimodal modelling, with a focus on evaluation, reliability, and state‑of‑the‑art results. Your work will translate foundational research into production‑scale systems that improve outcomes for doctors and patients. As the company grows, you will shape standards for model quality, safety, and observability, and contribute to strategic initiatives that include computer vision and vision‑language work.
We welcome applicants from across the United States, with a preference for this role to be based in our new San Francisco office.

What You’ll Do

• Own end‑to‑end applied research: frame the problem, design experiments, ship to production, and monitor impact against real‑world metrics.
• Set technical direction across LLMs, retrieval, and multimodal; run ablations and error analysis that change product decisions.
• Build evaluation that matters: link offline metrics to online outcomes; define thresholds, monitoring, and rollback.
• Partner to deliver with engineering, product, and, when relevant, clinicians/domain experts to align data, success criteria, and timelines.
• Raise the bar by mentoring peers and codifying standards for reliability, safety, and documentation.
• Improve the platform (data, training, serving, observability) to speed iteration and ensure reproducibility.
• Explore new directions, with computer vision/vision‑language work as a nice‑to‑have for future strategic initiatives.

What We’re Looking For

• MS or PhD (or equivalent research experience) in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computational Linguistics, Biomedical Informatics, or a related quantitative field.
• 7+ years of applied ML research experience (or PhD + 5 years, or equivalent evidence of Staff‑level impact).
• Depth in one or more areas: LLMs and NLP, computer vision, speech, recommendation/ranking, retrieval, or multimodal modelling.
• Strong experimental rigor: clear hypothesis framing, offline‑to‑online linkage, calibration and stratified analyses, ablations that influence decisions.
• Proven ability to take models to production.
• Hands‑on with modern tooling: PyTorch and common experiment/ops tools (e.g., MLflow, Databricks, Ray, or similar).
• System thinking: choose methods based on constraints, design for observability and rollback, and document decisions clearly.
• Collaborative communicator who writes crisp design docs and explains complex ideas to non‑specialists; comfortable mentoring peers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Health data familiarity, including EHR or imaging.
• Experience in one or more areas: clinical NLP or LLMs, computer vision, speech, retrieval or multimodal modelling.
• Shipped, measured models in production with monitoring and clear rollback; external or multi‑site validation is a plus.
• Workflow integration with EHR, RIS, PACS, or reporting systems; PowerScribe or Dragon exposure helpful.
• Strong evaluation practices: calibration, slice analysis, and ablations.
• Safety and governance in sensitive domains, including PHI handling and HIPAA or FDA‑adjacent environments.
• Technical mentorship and contributions to team research culture; publications or impactful open‑source work.
• Practical tooling: PyTorch plus modern ML ops tools such as MLflow, Databricks, Ray, or Triton.

Why This Matters

Radiologists are the invisible backbone of modern medicine. Every diagnosis, every surgery, every treatment plan begins with their interpretations. Yet they're often overwhelmed by cognitive load, repetitive tasks, and administrative overhead. At Rad AI, we're using ML to change that—building intelligent systems that understand medical context, streamline documentation, and amplify human expertise. You’ve already seen how AI can transform healthcare. Now help us push it further. Join us in shaping how AI supports the next generation of medical professionals.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Medical, Dental, Vision & Life insurance
• HSA (with employer match), FSA, & DCFSA
• 401(k)
• 11 Paid Company Holidays
• Flexible PTO policy
• Annual company‑wide offsite
• Periodic team offsites
• Annual equipment stipend
• For roles based outside the US, your recruiter can share more details.

Compensation

Compensation Range: $190K - $260K

EEO Statement

At Rad AI, we value diversity and provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Job Security and Application Advice

Please be vigilant regarding job scams. We advise all candidates to apply directly through our official careers page. Our recruiters will use email addresses with the domain @radai.com or no‑[e-mail].