About the Job
Garner is on a mission to transform the U.S. healthcare system — and we’re the only proven player doing exactly that. We partner with employers to redesign how healthcare works: applying 550+ proprietary clinical metrics across 80+ specialties to a dataset of 320M+ patients to identify the best-performing doctors, t...
The result is a rare “win win” — better care and lower costs for both members and employers. In just five years, our work has helped over 2.5 million people access higher-quality care and saved $1B in healthcare costs. We recently raised our Series E and have doubled five years running. If you've ever wanted your wo...
We are seeking an exceptional Applied Scientist to join our Applied Science team. In this role, you will design, develop, and deploy the algorithmic systems that power Garner's products and drive meaningful impact for our members. Our members rely on us to answer hard questions — Which doctor should I see? What will...
Key Responsibilities
We are seeking an exceptional Applied Scientist to join our Applied Science team. In this role, you will design, develop, and deploy the algorithmic systems that power Garner's products and drive meaningful impact for our members. 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 not a dashboards or descriptive-analytics role. You will own 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 a quantitative researcher at a top hedge fund.
Own the most ambiguous, high-stakes problems on the team end-to-end, and serve as a technical resource others rely on
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
Find novel ways to frame and solve the team's hardest problems, proving out approaches that others build on
Set the bar for quality by reviewing others' work with rigor, and build the standards and evaluation tooling the team relies on
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.
Required Skills & Abilities
4+ years of industry experience as an Applied Scientist, Machine Learning Engineer, Research Scientist, or equivalent; or 2+ 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
Deep technical range, with fluency across Garner's data and a habit of staying current with advances in the field
Strong judgment in choosing between statistical models, heuristics, optimization approaches, and simpler algorithmic methods depending on the problem
Strong communication skills and the ability to synthesize complex algorithmic ideas for senior and external stakeholders, and to secure buy-in for cross-team work
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
You’ll work on problems that matter, at a company working to change healthcare at scale. You’ll work at the intersection of AI and systemic healthcare reform, where the problems we solve are as interesting and compelling as the mission.
At Garner, you’ll take on real, ambitious problems with real ownership and autonomy, alongside exceptional, principles-based people who genuinely want you to win. It’s demanding by design. You’ll be challenged to stretch beyond what you thought possible and receive consistent coaching to help you grow and do the best work of your career. This isn't the right fit for everyone, and that's intentional. The people here are driven by what's at stake for real people, and that's what gives our intensity its purpose.
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.
This is a unique opportunity to join a fast-growing company in a transformative role, helping shape the future of healthcare.
