Manager of Product Applied Science

Who you are

• 6+ years of industry experience as an Applied Scientist, Machine Learning Engineer, Research Scientist, or equivalent; or 4+ years of industry experience with a relevant advanced degree, PhDs preferred
• Deep technical credibility, with the range and judgment to lead scientists who are experts in their own right, and the willingness to stay hands-on
• Strong judgment in choosing between statistical models, heuristics, optimization approaches, and simpler algorithmic methods depending on the problem
• Strong applied problem-solving skills, with the ability to define good metrics and then deliver solutions that improve them
• A bias toward action, quickly translating ideas into working prototypes to test approaches
• Strong communication skills, including at the executive level, with a track record of driving alignment across teams and functions
• A desire to be a part of a high-performing, mission-driven team that operates with urgency, a strong sense of individual accountability, and a commitment to authentic feedback

What the job involves

• We are seeking an exceptional Manager, Applied Science to build and lead a team at the core of Garner's product
• Our members rely on us to answer hard questions — Which doctor should I see?
• What will it cost?
• When should we reach out, and how?
• — and the quality of those answers is determined by the algorithms behind them
• This is a hands-on management role
• You are responsible for the overall technical direction of your squad, building alongside your team of Applied Scientists to solve some of the hardest problems at the company
• This is not a dashboards or descriptive-analytics team
• Your team owns production systems end-to-end: framing the problem, defining the objective function, choosing the right approach (ML, optimization, heuristics, expert systems, or a hybrid), shipping it, and improving it against real-world outcomes
• The closest analog outside healthcare is leading a research pod at a top hedge fund
• Lead a team of Applied Scientists — hire, coach, and develop them, hold the bar on both rigor and speed, and help raise that bar across Applied Science
• Own your team's roadmap and delivery: what gets built, in what order, and whether it ships
• Set technical direction, and get in the weeds to do it — stay close enough to the code and the data to call the approach yourself, whether that's machine learning, optimization, a heuristic, or a simple rule, and set the standard for how your team makes that call
• Define the set of metrics needed to judge whether a solution is working, and validate solutions before they ship
• Put your own hands on the problems where your judgment matters most — the highest-stakes, least-defined work — and deliver the algorithmic step-changes that move metrics like total-cost-of-care savings, steerage, and member engagement
• Turn ambiguous business goals into a clear problem set alongside Research, Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders, and represent your team's work to senior leadership
• Set the quality bar: review your team's work with rigor, and define the metrics that decide whether a solution is working
• Build a deep understanding of the healthcare economy and Garner's place in it
• ---To make the role concrete, here are three problems on our near-term roadmap:
• Provider tiering optimization. Build a tiering algorithm that jointly optimizes geographic access and total-cost-of-care savings across our doctor network. The objective function, constraints, and tradeoff surface are all open design questions
• AI primary care doctor. Fine-tune and productionize an LLM-based primary care experience on our website, including the evaluation harness, guardrails, and ongoing quality monitoring needed to ship a medical-adjacent product safely
• Member engagement model. Build an ML system that ingests claims data and in-app behavior to choose the right channel and moment for each touchpoint — SMS, push, phone, or email — to influence member behavior toward better-quality, lower-cost care
• Technologies we use:
• Python, SQL, AWS, Snowflake, pandas, XGBoost, PyTorch, HuggingFace, modern LLM tooling and eval frameworks. We pick tools based on the problem, not the resume — bring your judgment

Benefits

• Flexible PTO
• Garner for Garner (employees enrolled in a Garner medical plan gain access to the Garner benefit to find Top Providers and get reimbursed for eligible expenses)
• Hybrid and remote work
• Team meets twice each year to spark innovation and foster belonging
• Variety of social programs beyond work hours
• Equal paid parental leave (12 weeks) following the birth, adoption or placement of a child
• 401(k) plan with a 2% company match and immediate vesting
• Other financial benefits such as Flexible Spending Accounts and mortgage assistance