Manager, Applied Science

Garner Health•New York, NY

1d•$300,000 - $390,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Garner is 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.

Requirements

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

Nice To Haves

Python
SQL
AWS
Snowflake
pandas
XGBoost
PyTorch
HuggingFace
modern LLM tooling and eval frameworks

Responsibilities

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