Machine Learning Scientist

About the Role

The Machine Learning Scientist position at Abridge is centered on owning the end-to-end research lifecycle for clinical conversational AI. In this role, you will advance the state of the art in medical NLP while ensuring rigorous scientific validation of all methods. You will partner directly with clinicians and product teams to translate complex medical workflows into scalable machine learning solutions. Your work will define the research agenda that powers Abridge's core platform and influences how thousands of clinicians document patient encounters. You will leverage deep expertise in foundation models to solve high-stakes problems in healthcare communication with precision and responsibility. This role requires intellectual curiosity, ownership, and the ability to navigate ambiguity while maintaining scientific integrity. You will mentor and be mentored by a multidisciplinary team of MDs, engineers, and AI scientists committed to measurable impact in patient care. Ultimately, your contributions will shape the standards for trustworthy AI in healthcare and directly improve clinical documentation workflows.

What You'll Do

• Advance the state of the art in medical NLP, in areas including conversation summarization, evidence extraction, outcome prediction, evaluation techniques, and experimentation.
• Actively contribute to the wider research community by sharing and publishing original research.
• Help to define important problems, identify appropriate baselines, develop state-of-the-art methods, and ship them into production.
• Dial deeply into real-time feedback from clinicians to guide further refinements and innovations.
• Be results-oriented in the face of ambiguous problems and uncertain outcomes.
• Explore and prototype novel machine learning architectures tailored for medical conversation understanding and summarization.
• Design and execute experiments to measure evidence extraction accuracy, outcome prediction reliability, and evaluation technique robustness.
• Partner with clinical stakeholders to interpret real-time feedback and translate qualitative insights into quantitative research goals.
• Establish rigorous baselines and benchmark datasets that reflect the complexity of real-world healthcare environments.
• Implement end-to-end pipelines that transition research prototypes into scalable, auditable production systems.
• Analyze large-scale observational data to identify patterns in clinician-patient interactions and model behavior.
• Lead literature reviews and hypothesis generation to address open problems in medical NLP and generative AI.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to define technical feasibility and prioritize research deliverables.
• Contribute to grant proposals, whitepapers, and open-source initiatives that showcase Abridge's technical leadership.
• Iterate quickly on research findings while maintaining strict standards for reproducibility and model interpretability.

Requirements

• Hold a graduate degree (MS or PhD) in Electrical Engineering, Computer Sciences, Mathematics, or equivalent experience.
• Build a strong research background demonstrated through peer-reviewed publications at top-tier AI and NLP conferences.
• Publish work at venues such as ACL, COLM, EACL, NAACL, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, Interspeech, ICASSP, SLT, MLHC, or ML4H.
• Demonstrate significant real-world impact through deployed technology and meaningful open source contributions.
• Write production-grade code with proven experience crafting, prototyping, and delivering machine learning solutions at scale.
• Master deep learning frameworks including PyTorch, Jax, and Tensorflow, along with multi-GPU training strategies.
• Apply advanced statistical analyses to observational and experimental data in high-stakes medical contexts.
• Commit to working from the San Francisco office a minimum of three times per week under a hybrid work model.
• Be eligible for relocation assistance if moving to San Francisco to join the team.

Why Work at Abridge

At Abridge, we are transforming healthcare delivery experiences with generative AI, enabling clinicians and patients to connect in deeper, more meaningful ways. Our mission is to power deeper understanding in healthcare. We are driving real, lasting change, with millions of medical conversations processed each month. Joining Abridge means stepping into a fast-paced, high-growth startup where your contributions truly make a difference. Our culture requires extreme ownership - every employee has the ability to (and is expected to) make an impact on our customers and our business.

Beyond individual impact, you will have the opportunity to work alongside a team of curious, high-achieving people in a supportive environment where success is shared, growth is constant, and feedback fuels progress. At Abridge, it's not just what we do - it's how we do it. Every decision is rooted in empathy, always prioritizing the needs of clinicians and patients.

We're committed to supporting your growth, both professionally and personally. Whether it's flexible work hours, an inclusive culture, or ongoing learning opportunities, we are here to help you thrive and do the best work of your life. If you are ready to make a meaningful impact alongside passionate people who care deeply about what they do, Abridge is the place to do it.