Join us as we work to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.
RESEARCHER – FOUNDATIONAL MODELS
We are looking for a Lead Foundational Models Machine Learning Engineer to join the Research team in the Core AI Subdivision. You will work with the team to evaluate, compare, and provide expert guidance on the application of commercial and open-source foundational models across athenahealth’s products, offerings, and processes.
About you:
You love to own important work and find it difficult to turn down a good challenge. You are excited about the latest developments in AI & ML and keep abreast of the latest models, methods, and technologies. You have experience building, tuning, evaluating, and deploying ML models at scale. You have strong communication skills and love working with colleagues from a variety of technical and non-technical backgrounds. You enjoy both learning and teaching, and you are excited to share your expertise across the company. You love collaboration and working closely with a team of other experts and with technical and non-technical stakeholders. Finally, you have a strong interest in improving the delivery of healthcare.
About the team:
The Core AI Subdivision is bringing Artificial Intelligence to bear against the hardest problems in healthcare. We are working with product and engineering leaders across the company to build AI into our Best In KLAS suite of products. We work together with athenahealth engineers to deploy state-of-the-art machine learning models and agents.
Job Responsibilities:
As a member of the Research team focusing on foundational models, you provide subject matter expertise, practical technical guidance, and tooling as needed on the capabilities of leading commercial and open source foundational, pretrained models. Your guidance includes such dimensions as:
Supported modalities for input and output e.g., text, image, audio, video.
Reasoning capabilities
Broad performance based on industry benchmarks and any athena specific benchmarks.
Inferencing latency
Fine-tuning and inferencing cost forecasting
Extension capabilities such as tool calling.
Licensing & service usage terms with a POV on whether they can be usable for athena.
Your expertise and guidance will also include related aspects of leveraging foundational models such as:
Prompt engineering techniques.
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and Vector Databases
Distillation
Leveraging multiple FMs (Mixture of Experts, Ensemble learning, Hierarchical LLMs, etc.)
Guard rails and safety.
As a member of the Research team, you will:
Identify opportunities for using foundational models in development and help evaluate which are best for athenahealth’s needs and on our data.
Team with athenahealth data owners and stakeholders to develop internal benchmark suites for quantifying performance of foundational models.
Individually and with other members of Core AI: develop and deliver internal documentation and trainings to convey your findings broadly in the organization.
Understand and follow conventions and best practices for modeling, coding, architecture, and statistics; and hold other team members accountable for doing so.
Apply rigorous testing of statistics, models, and code.
Contribute to the development of internal tools and Core AI team standards.
Typical Qualifications:
Excellent verbal communication and writing skills.
Bachelors in relevant field: math, computer science, data science, economics.
At least 6 years of professional experience developing and evaluating machine learning models.
At least 2 years enterprise experience training, fine-tuning, and deploying models.
Proficient in Python.
Experience using machine learning models and libraries.
Familiarity with NLP, computer vision, ambient computing techniques.
Experience with evaluating, prompting, and tuning foundational or GenAI models from organizations such as Amazon, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Hugging Face (various), Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
Experience using the AWS ecosystem a bonus, including Kubernetes, Kubeflow or EKS experience.
About athenahealth
Our vision: In an industry that becomes more complex by the day, we stand for simplicity. We offer IT solutions and expert services that eliminate the daily hurdles preventing healthcare providers from focusing entirely on their patients — powered by our vision to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.
Our company culture: Our talented employees — or athenistas, as we call ourselves — spark the innovation and passion needed to accomplish our vision. We are a diverse group of dreamers and do-ers with unique knowledge, expertise, backgrounds, and perspectives. We unite as mission-driven problem-solvers with a deep desire to achieve our vision and make our time here count. Our award-winning culture is built around shared values of inclusiveness, accountability, and support.
Our DEI commitment: Our vision of accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all requires addressing the inequities that stand in the way. That's one reason we prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of our business, from attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce to maintaining an inclusive environment for athenistas, our partners, customers and the communities where we work and serve.
What we can do for you:
Along with health and financial benefits, athenistas enjoy perks specific to each location, including commuter support, employee assistance programs, tuition assistance, employee resource groups, and collaborative workspaces — some offices even welcome dogs.
We also encourage a better work-life balance for athenistas with our flexibility. While we know in-office collaboration is critical to our vision, we recognize that not all work needs to be done within an office environment, full-time. With consistent communication and digital collaboration tools, athenahealth enables employees to find a balance that feels fulfilling and productive for each individual situation.
In addition to our traditional benefits and perks, we sponsor events throughout the year, including book clubs, external speakers, and hackathons. We provide athenistas with a company culture based on learning, the support of an engaged team, and an inclusive environment where all employees are valued.
Learn more about our culture and benefits here: athenahealth.com/careers
https://www.athenahealth.com/careers/equal-opportunity
Top Skills
athenahealth Boston, Massachusetts, USA Office
80 Guest Street, Boston, MA, United States, 02135
Similar Jobs
What you need to know about the Boston Tech Scene
Key Facts About Boston Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 269,000; 9.4% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Toast, Klaviyo, HubSpot, DraftKings
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, software, aerospace
- Funding Landscape: $15.7 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Summit Partners, Volition Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, MassVentures, Highland Capital Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: MIT, Harvard University, Boston College, Tufts University, Boston University, Northeastern University, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, National Bureau of Economic Research, Broad Institute, Lowell Center for Space Science & Technology, National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories
