Thalamus is the market leader in graduate medical education recruitment technology, empowering over 8,000 residency and fellowship programs at 800+ health systems and all new physicians throughout the US annually. As we expand beyond GME into broader physician recruitment, our unique dataset—spanning the full profiles of residency/fellowship applicants and programs—positions us to revolutionize hiring in healthcare through AI/ML and data-driven insights. This furthers our mission to ensure the right doctor ends up at the right hospital to treat the right patients.
We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist to help build the AI team and data science function from the ground up and play a key role in translating our unique dataset into real-world impact. This is a rare opportunity to shape the data function of a high-growth, product-led, mission-driven, and growth-stage company that is solving one of the most critical workforce challenges in healthcare, and costs the US healthcare system upwards of $300B annually.
You will be a strong individual contributor and the first member of the team leading the design, development, and deployment of advanced AI/ML models, with an emphasis on LLMs, NLP applications, and other modern AI techniques. You’ll work closely with product, data engineering, and application engineering to turn prototypes into production-ready features that guide smarter hiring decisions for health systems and better career outcomes for physicians.
What you will achieve
Design, prototype, and productionize ML/AI models for a range of use cases, including predictive analytics, recommendation systems, semantic search, classification, and more
Build LLM-powered features (e.g., RAG, prompt chaining, embeddings) to enrich unstructured data and drive user-facing intelligence
Collaborate with engineering to integrate models into scalable MLOps workflows and monitor performance in real-world use
Work with large, messy, high-dimensional healthcare datasets to derive structured insights and training sets
Research and evaluate modern ML approaches and apply them to product and business needs
Identify and collaborate with the data team to integrate relevant third-party datasets and APIs to to supplement proprietary data and strengthen model performance
Contribute to the development of a repeatable experimentation and model evaluation framework
Identify and drive opportunities to differentiate the company’s AI offerings, contributing insights and feedback to influence product and research directions.
Represent the company at industry events, conferences, and webinars, sharing expertise and promoting innovative AI solutions.
Stay current on trends in generative AI, applied ML, and healthcare AI regulation and help guide responsible implementation
You should have ...
7-10+ years of experience in applied machine learning, NLP, or AI development
Deep expertise in Python and its ML ecosystem (e.g., Scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face)
Experience working with LLMs, embeddings, vector stores, RAG, or semantic search techniques
Proven ability leading successful customer-facing projects taking AI applications from concept to production, including feature engineering, training, validation, deployment, and monitoring
Solid experience working with both structured and unstructured data - such as text, profiles, logs, surveys, and documents - to clean, transform, and model large, high-dimensional datasets
Strong familiarity with modern cloud platforms (Azure or AWS), MLOps practices and distributed computing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Databricks)
Comfortable working cross-functionally with engineering, product, and data stakeholders
Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, or a related technical field
Bonus
Prior experience in healthcare or physician-facing applications
Familiarity with model interpretability techniques, AI ethics, or regulatory compliance in ML/AI systems
Experience with tools like LangChain, LlamaIndex
The salary range for this position is $210,000 - $250,000 and a grant of stock options. Final compensation will be determined based on experience, skills, and geographic location.
Thalamus is a mission-driven organization centered on the belief that our company should model what we want of the US healthcare system, that the diversity of providers aligns with patient populations. We believe this is best achieved by building a team with a diversity of backgrounds, cultures, and experiences, including “distance traveled.” Thalamus is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status (including registered domestic partnership status), sex and gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and related medical conditions), gender identity and gender expression (including transgender individuals who are transitioning, have transitioned, or are perceived to be transitioning to the gender with which they identify), age, sexual orientation, Civil Air Patrol status, military and veteran status, and any other consideration protected by federal, state, or local law. We encourage those who really want to make an impact and who exemplify our core values to apply for our open positions.
Actual base salary offered will be determined by: experience, skills, and work location. This range is for base salary, our total compensation includes equity and benefits. We welcome you to apply even if your expectations are outside our listed range.
Thalamus is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures and throughout employment. If you need assistance or any accommodation, please let us know.
Thalamus does not accept unsolicited resumes from recruiters or employment agencies without a fully executed recruitment agreement in place. In the absence of such agreement, Thalamus reserves the right to pursue and hire any candidates without an obligation to pay fees. Agencies are requested not to contact Thalamus hiring managers or employees regarding recruiting services.
*This position is based in the United States, and you must be legally authorized to work in the United States.
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