🧠 AI Research & Strategy Lead – Foundation Models in Healthcare

📍 Amsterdam, Netherlands or Cape Town, South Africa (Hybrid)

📅 Full-time | Applied AI & Technical Strategy

Help define the future of AI in healthcare — and build it, too.

At Autoscriber, we're using AI to reshape how clinicians work. Our platform turns doctor-patient conversations into structured clinical documentation, freeing up healthcare professionals to spend more time on care and less on admin.

We're looking for an AI Research & Strategy Lead, someone who thrives at the intersection of applied research and product impact. This role is perfect for a highly technical thinker-doer who wants to explore foundational questions like:

• Should we fine-tune open models or use third-party APIs?
• How do we make real-time speech and language models clinically robust?
• When is retrieval better than generation?
• How do we evaluate models for safety, bias, and reliability in a medical setting?

You'll shape the direction of our AI efforts while staying close to the code and experimentation. If you're excited by both big questions and hard problems, and want your work to improve lives at scale — we'd love to talk.

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🔍 What you'll be doing

• Set technical direction on how we build and deploy ML/AI across speech, language, and decision support.
• Lead deep dives into build vs. buy decisions around foundation models and LLMs.
• Design and run experiments with open-weight models (e.g., Whisper, Mistral, Gemma) and APIs from leading providers (e.g., OpenAI, Google, AWS).
• Prototype and implement real-time inference pipelines for speech and language tasks.
• Contribute directly to model fine-tuning, evaluation frameworks, and integration into product pipelines.
• Stay on top of the latest ML research and identify practical paths from paper to production.
• Work closely with product and engineering teams to align technical decisions with user impact and feasibility.

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🎓 What we're looking for

• Master's or PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience applying ML in production, with a strong research or applied science background.
• Deep knowledge of modern ML techniques, particularly around speech recognition, language modeling, and LLMs.
• Strong coding and prototyping skills in Python, with experience using tools like PyTorch, Hugging Face, or similar.
• Experience deploying models in production (ideally in real-time or streaming contexts).
• A pragmatic approach to research: know when to invent and when to re-use.
• Excellent communication skills — comfortable sharing ideas with engineers, product teams, and occasionally clinicians.
• Experience in health or a strong interest in contributing to the space.

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✨ Bonus points for

• Experience with speech-to-text in noisy, real-world environments.
• Familiarity with EHR systems, medical ontologies, or healthcare workflows.
• Understanding of privacy and data protection regulations (e.g. GDPR, HIPAA).
• Contributions to open-source or published research in relevant areas.

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🤝 What we offer

• A chance to apply cutting-edge research where it truly matters — in service of better healthcare.
• A role where you can think strategically and build hands-on — no ivory towers.
• A collaborative, fast-moving culture that values clarity, autonomy, and results.
• Flexible hybrid setup (Amsterdam or Cape Town base).
• Competitive compensation and meaningful equity package.

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