Staff ML Engineer

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Sword Health is shifting healthcare from
- first to AI-first through its AI Care platform, making
- class healthcare available anytime, anywhere, while significantly reducing costs for payers,
- insured employers, national health systems, and other healthcare organizations. Sword began by reinventing pain care with AI at its core, and has since expanded into women’s health, movement health, and more recently mental health. Since 2020, more than 700, 000 members across three continents have completed 10 million AI sessions, helping Sword's 1, 000+ enterprise clients avoid over $1 billion in unnecessary healthcare costs. Backed by 42 clinical studies and over 44 patents, Sword Health has raised more than $500 million from leading investors, including Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Transformation Capital, and Founders Fund. Learn more at www.swordhealth.com.

What you’ll be doing:

• Own complex ML problems
  -
  - end – Take on the hardest technical challenges (like fine‑tuning LLMs to maximize clinical outcomes) from initial exploration through production deployment and real‑world iteration.
• Drive technical strategy in your domain – Define how we approach model development, evaluation, and optimization for clinical AI applications.
• Build and optimize production LLM systems – Design and implement fine‑tuning pipelines, preference optimization (RLHF, DPO), and rigorous evaluation frameworks for clinical use cases.
• Work deeply across the full AI stack – From data preparation and model training through deployment, monitoring, and iteration in production environments.
• Influence across teams – Partner with Product, Clinical, and Engineering teams to shape technical decisions and ensure we’re solving the right problems.
• Raise the technical bar – Mentor engineers, establish best practices, and help define what excellent ML engineering looks like at Sword.
• May lead 1‑2 engineers on specific projects, providing technical direction and mentorship.

What you need to have:

• Deep expertise in production ML systems – Built and shipped ML systems that users depend on, with a track record of solving complex technical problems.
• Production LLM experience – Fine‑tuned, evaluated, and deployed LLMs in production environments.
• Experience with preference optimization – Implemented techniques like RLHF, DPO, or similar approaches in production settings.
• Strong ML fundamentals – Understand when to use different ML approaches, design rigorous evaluation frameworks, and make principled technical trade‑offs.
• End‑to‑end ownership – Taken ambiguous, complex problems from initial exploration through production deployment and ongoing iteration.
• Excellent engineering skills – Write production‑quality code, understand distributed systems, and debug complex ML pipelines.
• Communication and influence – Drive technical decisions across teams and explain complex trade‑offs to technical and clinical stakeholders.

What we would love to see:

• Experience with healthcare AI or clinical applications and the unique challenges of building ML for high‑stakes domains.
• Track record of designing evaluation frameworks for LLMs in specialized domains.
• Contributions to the ML community through open source, technical writing, or other knowledge sharing.

To ensure you feel good solving a big Human problem, we offer:

• A stimulating, fast‑paced environment with lots of room for creativity.
• A bright future at a promising high‑tech startup company.
• Career development and growth, with a competitive salary.
• The opportunity to work with a talented team and to add real value to an innovative solution with the potential to change the future of healthcare.
• A flexible environment where you can control your hours (remotely) with unlimited vacation.
• Access to our health and well‑being program (digital therapist sessions).
• Remote or Hybrid work policy.
• To get to know more about our Tech Stack, check here.

The interview process:

• 30‑minute call with the recruiter.
• 30‑minute call with an initial screener.
• 1 take‑home assignment (to be delivered within 1 week).
• 1 hour general skills and working principles interview.
• 1 hour mindset and cultural fit interview.

Portugal – Sword Benefits & Perks:

• Health, dental and vision insurance.
• Meal allowance.
• Equity shares.
• Remote work allowance.
• Flexible working hours.
• Work from home.
• Discretionary vacation.
• Snacks and beverages.
• English class.

Note: This position does not offer relocation assistance. Candidates must possess a valid EU visa and be based in Portugal.

Sword Health complies with applicable Federal and State civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of Age, Ancestry, Color, Citizenship, Gender, Gender expression, Gender identity, Gender information, Marital status, Medical condition, National origin, Physical or mental disability, Pregnancy, Race, Religion, Caste, Sexual orientation, and Veteran status.

Seniority level: Not Applicable

Employment type: Full‑time

Job function: Engineering and Information Technology

Industries: Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain and Storage