Applied AI/ML Lead

Capstan Medical, Inc. • Santa Cruz, CA

21d • Hybrid

About The Position

Join Us in Revolutionizing Cardiac Care from Beautiful Santa Cruz
Imagine bringing AI capabilities to life-saving robotics technology while being minutes from world-class surf breaks and redwood forests. We’re developing a groundbreaking robotic platform that gives surgeons superhuman precision in transcatheter valve deployment—and we need an Applied AI/ML Lead to help us integrate machine learning into our product for the first time.

This is a foundational hire. You’ll be the internal expert on AI/ML, but your primary job isn’t to train neural networks from scratch—it’s to understand the rapidly evolving AI/ML landscape, identify opportunities for our product, work with third-party partners who build ML algorithms, and integrate those capabilities into our robotic platform. We need a strong software engineer who can own the technical integration end-to-end, with enough ML depth to be a credible technical counterpart to our partners and to evaluate what’s possible.

Requirements

• Excellent software engineering fundamentals: you write clean, maintainable, production-quality code
• Strong Python skills with experience integrating ML models into larger software systems
• Familiarity with modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) and the ability to evaluate model architectures and performance
• Understanding of computer vision and medical imaging concepts—you can speak credibly with imaging specialists and ML researchers
• Experience managing technical vendor relationships or collaborating with external development partners
• Strong communication skills—you can translate between clinical needs, engineering constraints, and ML capabilities
• Ability to read and synthesize ML research papers and assess applicability to real-world problems
• Comfortable working in ambiguity and defining the path forward in a new problem space
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent; advanced degree in ML/AI is a plus but not required
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Experience integrating ML or AI capabilities into production systems
• Track record of working effectively with external partners or vendors on technical deliverables
• Self-directed and comfortable owning a new functional area with limited existing infrastructure
• Must be authorized to work in the U.S. (U.S. Citizen or Green Card holder required; no sponsorship available)
• Ability to work in a hybrid environment, onsite 2-3 days a week at our Santa Cruz, CA office or Portola Valley satellite office

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience with medical imaging data (X-ray, ultrasound, echo, CT, MRI)
• Experience shipping ML-enabled products in a regulated or safety-critical environment
• Familiarity with model validation and documentation requirements for medical devices
• Exposure to robotics, real-time systems, or image-guided procedures
• Experience building data pipelines or ML infrastructure
• Background in applied ML, even if not your primary focus

Responsibilities

• Stay current on advances in AI/ML as applied to medical imaging (X-ray, 3D echo, CT) and identify opportunities to bring these capabilities into our product
• Own relationships with third-party ML and imaging partners—define requirements, evaluate their work, and hold them accountable for deliverables
• Integrate ML models and AI-enabled features into our robotic software platform, ensuring they work reliably in a real-time clinical environment
• Translate clinical and engineering requirements into practical ML problem statements that external partners can execute against
• Evaluate ML model performance, define acceptance criteria, and support validation activities for regulatory submissions
• Collaborate cross-functionally with software, robotics, controls, and clinical teams to ensure ML outputs are useful and well-integrated into procedural workflows
• Build internal tooling and infrastructure for model evaluation, data management, and integration testing
• Contribute to longer-term AI/ML roadmap planning and help define when to build vs. buy vs. partner

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level