Clinical Research Scientist, Mental Health AI

Vals AI • San Francisco, CA

6d

About The Position

We’re looking for a Clinical Research Scientist to help lead and expand our work evaluating AI systems in mental health and other clinically sensitive settings. As people increasingly use AI for emotional support, health information, and guidance during periods of distress, we need better ways to determine whether these systems respond safely and appropriately. Many important risks emerge over the course of a conversation, including missed signs of escalating distress, reinforcement of harmful beliefs, diagnostic overreach, and unhealthy emotional dependence. You’ll work closely with our existing research team and engineers to build clinically grounded benchmarks, realistic multi-turn scenarios, scoring criteria, and validation studies. You’ll help define what safe and unsafe model behavior looks like and ensure our evaluations reflect meaningful clinical risks. This role is a strong fit for a clinical psychologist, psychiatrist, or clinical scientist who wants to help shape a growing research program in mental health AI evaluation while maintaining active academic and clinical collaborations.

Requirements

• PhD, PsyD, MD, or equivalent research training in Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry, Behavioral Science, Public Health, or a closely related field.
• Experience designing and leading empirical research, including study design, analysis, and scientific writing.
• Strong grounding in psychopathology, clinical assessment, risk evaluation, or evidence-based mental health care.
• Track record of peer-reviewed research.
• Experience with clinical, behavioral, quantitative, qualitative, or psychometric research methods.
• Ability to translate clinical concepts into clear, testable evaluation criteria.

Nice To Haves

• Research in adolescent mental health, suicide or self-harm, psychosis, eating disorders, trauma, or other clinically complex areas.
• Experience developing or validating clinical measures, rating systems, or coding frameworks.
• Experience with longitudinal research, conversation analysis, or real-world behavioral data.
• Experience studying AI or other digital technologies.
• Familiarity with large language models or AI evaluation.
• Experience leading IRBs or cross-institutional collaborations.

Responsibilities

• Lead the clinical design of evaluations for AI systems used in mental health and other sensitive domains.
• Identify important clinical failure modes and translate them into realistic scenarios and clear scoring criteria.
• Design studies to validate evaluation methods, including clinician review, inter-rater reliability, and comparisons with real-world interaction data.
• Work with psychologists, psychiatrists, researchers, and academic collaborators to develop rigorous benchmarks.
• Partner with technical researchers and engineers to implement evaluations at scale.
• Analyze model behavior, publish findings, and help shape our broader research agenda.

Benefits

• Significant ownership over the direction of our mental health AI research
• Close collaboration with clinical, technical, and research colleagues
• Strong technical support and resources for large-scale studies
• Competitive salary, meaningful equity, and title flexibility based on experience
• Relocation and transportation support
• Health and dental insurance
• Lunch and dinner provided, plus snacks, coffee, and drinks
• Unlimited PTO

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree