Why you should join us
Tandem is a generational opportunity to rethink how we bring new therapies to market, and our path to doing so is significantly de-risked – we have:
Exponential organic growth: We have product-market fit and are growing rapidly through word-of-mouth. Tandem supports thousands of patients every day, is doubling doctor users every quarter, and is working with the largest biopharma companies in the world.
An AI-first business model: Our approach is distinctly enabled by AI, but our business will get stronger (not commoditized) as foundation models improve. We are building durability through two-sided network effects that will compound over time.
Top tier investors: With the traction to support conviction in our model, we raised significant funding from investors (including Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, Bain Capital Ventures, and Pear VC) to build an exceptional team of engineers and operators.
Our number one priority is scaling to market demand. We are looking for individuals who are high horsepower, high throughput, and hyper resourceful to help us increase capacity and grow. We move fast and need to move faster.
All full-time roles are in person in New York. You can learn more about working with us in the last section of this page.
About the role
As Applied AI Lead at Tandem, you will define and lead the strategy for how we turn frontier AI capabilities into real-world systems that scale access to medicine and power our business. This is a hands-on, high-context leadership role — equal parts product strategy, technical judgment, and execution intensity. You will own the direction of all model-driven work at Tandem, from internal workflow automation to user-facing intelligence, and lead a small, exceptional team of engineers and researchers to build fast and prove impact.
You will work closely with leadership across product, engineering, operations, and go-to-market to ensure AI is integrated deeply and usefully across the company. You will also be a direct partner to our largest enterprise customers — helping translate their needs into capabilities and representing Tandem’s technical strategy externally. This is a foundational leadership role with broad surface area and high leverage.
This is a demanding role, with a high level of autonomy and responsibility. You will be expected to “act like an owner” and commit yourself to Tandem’s success. If you are low-ego, hungry to learn, and excited about intense, impactful work that drives both company growth and accelerated career progression, we want to hear from you.
If you join, you will:
Set the applied-AI vision and roadmap across workflow automation, data extraction, UX augmentation, and user-facing intelligence
Decide where to invest — model selection vs. fine-tuning, retrieval vs. generation, buy vs. build — and own evaluation, latency, reliability, and cost
Lead cross-functional discovery with product, engineering, ops, and GTM to surface and prioritize the next 10× automation wins
Ship end-to-end: prototype, iterate, productionize, and instrument impact on user metrics and unit economics
Represent Tandem in conversations with enterprise customers and partners, translating their goals into AI capabilities and vice-versa
Hire, mentor, and retain a growing team of top-tier ML engineers and researchers
Stay ahead of the curve on emerging models, tooling, and best practices, bringing practical experiments into production quickly
We need your help to:
Decipher and automate complex, branching workflows for insurance coverage, affordability programs, and fulfillment
Combining AI/ML approaches to achieve high precision document classification, unstructured data extraction, and reference-based question answering
Automating multi-step, path-dependent processes, using a combination of RPA/scraping approaches to navigate and operate third-party platforms
Building a state machine that drives system decisions and handles failure modes across a set of processes that are technically independent but practically intertwined
Scale across a growing range of drug classes, patient populations, and provider markets
Making our data and ML pipelines robust to variation and inconsistency in input data formats (e.g., clinical documentation structure and style)
Leveraging empirical data to build and continuously update our understanding of opaque external systems (e.g., insurance company policies)
Creating consumer-grade experiences for patients, physicians, and other users that incorporate intuitive AI-powered workflows
Use our network to help biopharma partners accelerate drug development, launch, and access
Translating large volumes of heterogeneous data into reliable insights, informing decisions like clinical indication selection, launch markets, and insurer negotiations
Developing predictive and simulation models to forecast outcomes such as clinical trial site performance, drug adoption rates, and the impact of rebates/subsidies
Using real-time data and direct engagement channels to enroll criteria-matching patients and physicians in clinical studies and access programs
We’ll be most excited if you:
5–12 years shipping production AI systems that move core product or business metrics
Proficiency with modern AI/ML technologies (e.g., LLM APIs, PyTorch, TensorFlow) and a strong foundation in full-stack web development (we use Python, React, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and Kubernetes)
A product mindset — you care as much about user value and uptime as model perplexity
Proven judgment on where AI adds leverage vs. noise, and how to measure ROI
Strong written and verbal communication that allows you to be an effective participant in both internal debates and external relationships
Track record of moving quickly, finding shortcuts, and going to unreasonable lengths to deliver on goals
High NPS with your former teammates
This is a list of ideal qualifications for this position. If you don't meet every single one of them, you should still consider applying! We’re excited to work with people from underrepresented backgrounds, and we encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.
Working with us
Tandem is based in New York, with our full team working out of a beautiful and spacious office in SoHo.
We run as a high-trust environment with high autonomy, which requires that everyone is fully competent and operates in line with our principles:
Commit to audacity. "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right.”
Do the math. Be rigorous, assume nothing.
Find the shortest path. Use hacks, favors, and backdoors. Only take a longer road on purpose.
Spit it out. Be direct, invite critique, avoid equivocation – we want right answers.
Be demanding and supportive. Expect excellence from everyone and offer help to achieve it.
Do what it takes to be number 1. We work hard to make sure we win.
We provide competitive compensation with meaningful equity. Everyone who joins early will be a major contributor to our success, and we reflect this through ownership and pay.
We also provide rich benefits to ensure you can focus on creating impact:
Fully covered medical, vision, and dental insurance.
Memberships for One Medical, Talkspace, Teladoc, and Kindbody.
Unlimited paid time off (PTO) and 16 weeks of parental leave.
401K plan setup, FSA option, commuter benefits, and DashPass.
Lunch at the office every day and Dinner at the office after 7 pm.
Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our company’s size and industry, and are one part of the total compensation package that also includes equity, benefits, and other opportunities at Tandem (for full-time employees). Individual pay decisions are ultimately based on a number of factors, including qualifications for the role, experience level, skillset, geography, and balancing internal equity.
Tandem is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.
