Lead Machine Learning & AI Engineer

Join us as we work to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

athenahealth is seeking a visionary Lead AI/ML Engineer to design, develop, and deploy advanced AI and ML solutions that enable athenahealth to deliver accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.
As a multi-hat contributor, you bring a blend of data engineering, software engineering, and leadership. Your primary responsibility will be designing, implementing, deploying, and maintaining ML solutions for a mix of features across multiple product areas. Experience building, deploying, and maintaining ML systems is required, and familiarity with Generative AI, agentic AI, and the tooling to deploy these solutions in production software is highly desirable.
Beyond model work, you will serve as an advisor, advocate, and trusted partner within our subdivision: consulting with teams on their AI/ML approaches, evangelizing concepts across the organization, and helping shape our AI strategy through thought leadership in this dynamic field.
As an experienced leader in this space, you will have a high degree of autonomy in your work while collaborating closely with product managers, analysts, and engineers to responsibly and efficiently operationalize cutting-edge AI technologies.
The Team

Within our Patient Experience sub-division, we offer patients seamless access to their health records through our innovative athenaPatient mobile application and accessible web-based patient portal. We break down barriers by connecting patients to their providers through cutting-edge solutions. Additionally, we enhance care coordination by assisting patients in selecting the most suitable health provider referral based on factors such as costs, outcomes, and schedule availability.
In short, Patient Experience teams exist to make every patient’s digital touch-point—portal, mobile app, self-check-in, payments, scheduling, messaging—simple, trusted, and highly available, while delivering measurable value back to providers and their network.
Key Responsibilities

Lead end-to-end AI/ML projects—from research and design to deployment and ongoing maintenance—ensuring scalable, production-ready systems

Design and implement robust ML pipelines and production-grade infrastructure to support high-volume workloads

Partner with cross-functional teams to integrate AI capabilities aligned with business goals and customer needs

Research and prototype novel AI/ML algorithms and techniques to drive innovation.

Mentor engineers and foster a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous learning

Establish and enforce best practices for AI/ML development, deployment, monitoring, and governance

Monitor model performance, scalability, and cost in production, and drive continuous optimization

Advocate for responsible AI—focusing on fairness, transparency, and data privacy

Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders; contribute to the AI strategy and long-term technology direction
Required qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science/Engineering, or a related technical field

6+ years in technology or software development, with at least 3 years specializing in ML/AI, analytics, or data science roles

Extensive experience with ML frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, SageMaker) and hands-on model development

Proficiency in Python; working knowledge of Java; strong SQL; experience building data pipelines and APIs to connect web apps to data and ML models

Proven track record designing, developing, and deploying scalable ML/AI systems in production

Strong understanding of ML algorithms, deep learning, NLP, and statistical modeling

Experience with LLMs, generative AI, agentic AI, and related tooling; ability to compare these with traditional ML approaches

Excellent communication and interpersonal skills; experience leading cross-functional teams

Passion for staying current with AI research and applying novel techniques responsibly in production

Understanding of ethics, fairness, and compliance implications of AI; ability to lead associated initiatives

Ability to influence technical strategy and mentor engineers at various levels
Preferred qualifications

Advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in Computer Science, AI, Machine Learning, or related field

8+ years in technology or software development, with at least 4 years specializing in ML/AI, analytics, or data science roles

Deep experience with LLMs, generative AI, agentic AI, and specialized AI domains

Experience in enhancing AI model inference efficiency by leveraging vector databases for similarity search and experience with fine tuning strategies for LLMs

Hands-on experience deploying GenAI agentic solutions to production software

Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and container orchestration tools (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes)

Expertise in MLOps practices, including CI/CD for ML, model versioning, monitoring, and governance

Familiarity with large-scale data processing frameworks and ETL pipelines (e.g., Spark, Databricks)

Strong background in optimization techniques for training and inference to improve latency, throughput, and cost

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