Data and Machine Learning Lead

Motif Neurotech • Houston, TX

7d • Remote

About The Position

Motif is a medical device startup based in Houston, Texas, designing and developing minimally invasive electronic solutions for serious mental health conditions. Our goal is to create the smallest implantable brain stimulator to treat people with mental health disorders, powered by patent-pending methods for wireless power and data transmission. We are an early-stage startup with significant funding and are currently completing the development of our first minimally invasive neural stimulation system, preparing for future versions with additional functionality. We are seeking a cross-functional strategic leader to oversee clinical evidence generation and external research partnerships. This role involves leading the clinical roadmap from early feasibility through reimbursement, shaping the scientific narrative for a new class of psychiatric therapy, and overseeing the collection of multimodal data sets related to mental health disorders. The effort includes a focus on novel neural data from an implantable neurotech platform alongside consumer-grade wearables for applications such as automated dosing, detection of therapeutic effect, enhanced adherence, and prediction of potential relapse events. The ideal candidate will lead the machine learning effort from data through discovery and deployment. We are looking for individuals with a passion for translating early-stage neurotechnology into therapies that reach patients, who thrive in a high-growth, high-autonomy environment, and who believe in openness, honesty, curiosity, and challenging conventional methods.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in translating medical data into patient benefit within the medtech, pharmaceutical, or biotech industries, with progressive leadership responsibility
• Demonstrated experience in building infrastructure and know-how on data collection, management, and analysis within growing organizations
• Working knowledge of US regulatory pathways (FDA IDE/PMA) specific to deployment of data driven features
• Experience with complex data streams from electrophysiological sources, including neural data, cardiac, wearable accelerometry, sleep, and behavior (audio/video)
• Availability to travel as needed to scientific conferences and meetings, as well as to Houston, Texas for onsite meetings at Motif Headquarters up to 4-5 times/year

Nice To Haves

• Experience in active implantable medical devices, neuromodulation, or neurostimulation therapies
• Clinical or research background in psychiatry, depression, or related mental health indications
• Advanced degree (MD, PhD, or equivalent) and a record of peer-reviewed publications or successful grant applications
• Working knowledge of other regulatory pathways (EU MDR, TGA, etc.) and their respective data considerations

Responsibilities

• Develop and own the data science and machine learning roadmap
• Work with cross functional teams to understand what data is needed when, and put in place strategies to generate it
• Work with internal and external thought leaders to define problems worth solving, and create strategies for pursuing these solutions
• Collaborate with partner functions such as research, development, and clinical to integrate data and machine learning as a full partner in the Motif integrated roadmap
• Create plans to ensure that products are architected to predictably improve as data generated from their use scales (improvement native systems)
• Represent and communicate the Motif approach to data in mental health for investors, physicians, and other industry forums
• Define data strategy and execute data collection initiatives
• Define data sets needed to unlock impactful biomarkers relevant to the treatment of mental health disorders
• Work closely with the hardware, firmware, and software teams to ensure that the system collects high quality data in an appropriate format and with sufficient metadata to scale seamlessly across local and cloud-based infrastructures
• Architect thoughtful infrastructures that turn data scale into an asset and not an expense
• Work closely within awarded grants or identify new opportunities to scale data via partnerships
• Discover biomarkers or insights with impact
• Create analytic pipelines to fuse internal, external, and partnered data sets and drive scalable discovery
• Build organizational tools in machine learning, statistics, and other analytic techniques relevant to data from imaging, neural electrophysiology, wearable and lifestyle measures, video and speech
• Lead teams to develop and validate biomarkers, correlates, or other insights that solve problems of candidacy, dosing, efficacy assessment, and predictive delivery of therapy in the mental health space
• Deploy learning into clinical study efforts and, soon, commercial products
• Partner with R&D to embed data features in future products by translating research pipelines into production code
• Partner with internal and external experts to design platforms that allow rapid, agile research to occur on fielded products with a goal of accelerating discovery (safe, compliant, fast A/B testing for the neurotech community)
• Develop verification and validation strategies, and work with partners to ensure regulatory constraints are met
• Partner with clinical science on generation of evidence to unlock discoveries in clinical studies and commercial products in a predictable cadence
• Are familiar with cybersecurity considerations with different data types and can defer to experts when necessary

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents
• Participation in our 401k plan
• Unlimited PTO
• The chance to work with an incredible group of people working towards a common goal for a better future

What This Job Offers

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