Staff Applied Scientist

Garner’s mission is to transform the healthcare economy, delivering high-quality and affordable care for all.

We are fundamentally reimagining how healthcare works in the U.S. by partnering with employers to redesign healthcare benefits using clear incentives and powerful, data-driven insights. Our approach guides employees to higher-quality, lower-cost care, creating a system that works better for everyone. Patients achieve better health outcomes, employers spend healthcare dollars more effectively, and physicians are rewarded for delivering exceptional care rather than performing more procedures.

Garner is one of the fastest-growing healthcare technology companies in the country. Our products are trusted by the most sophisticated employers and providers in the industry, and we are building a team of talented, mission-driven individuals who are motivated to make a meaningful impact on healthcare at scale.

About the role

We are seeking an exceptional Staff Applied Researcher to join our Applied Science team. You will be responsible for building the algorithmic systems that power Garner — determining how we evaluate providers, make recommendations, and optimize for outcomes across cost, quality, and access.

You will be responsible for turning ambiguous, real-world problems into systems that deliver measurable impact, defining the objective functions, metrics, and logic that drive our product. You will own these systems end-to-end, from problem definition through production and ongoing performance.

Where you will work:

This role will be based in our New York City office (in the Financial District). You must be willing to work in the office 3 days per week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

What you will do:

Own the most ambiguous, high-stakes problems facing the company end-to-end, and set how the team frames and approaches them

Frame messy, real-world healthcare and business constraints into clear objectives, tradeoffs, and decision frameworks

Define the set of metrics needed to judge whether a solution is working, and validate solutions before they ship

Choose the right approach for each problem, from machine learning to optimization to heuristics to simple rules, based on what the problem actually calls for, and set the standard for how the team selects and applies these approaches

Deliver algorithmic breakthroughs that move the company's most important metrics, pioneering approaches that become how applied science is done at Garner

Review applied science work at the highest level across the company, ensuring the methods used across teams are sound and correctly applied

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.

The ideal candidate has:

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

A bias toward action, quickly translating ideas into working prototypes to test approaches

Strong applied problem-solving skills, with the ability to define good metrics and then deliver solutions that improve them

Recognized technical authority, with the judgment to ensure the techniques used across an organization are sound

Strong judgment in choosing between statistical models, heuristics, optimization approaches, and simpler algorithmic methods depending on the problem

Strong communication skills, including at the executive level, with a track record of driving alignment across an organization

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

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.

Why this role

This is a unique opportunity to work on high-impact search problems in healthcare, helping shape how members find better care through algorithmic systems that directly influence healthcare outcomes.

Compensation Transparency:

The target base c…