Staff ML Engineer (ML/AI)

    United States
    Full-Time
    Senior (7+ yrs)
    Engineering & Development
    Posted on August 8, 2026

    About the Role

    We are seeking a Staff ML/AI Engineer to define and drive the architectural vision for Lyra’s machine learning and generative AI technology landscape. In this role, you will serve as a technical anchor across the engineering and data organizations—architecting enterprise-scale AI platforms, setting technical strategy for high-impact AI/ML initiatives, and ensuring our AI products operate with top-tier reliability, security, and medical precision.

    The ideal candidate is a seasoned technical leader who excels at translating complex healthcare challenges into scalable platform solutions, building consensus across cross-functional leadership, and elevating the technical bar for the entire engineering organization.

    Lyra is for you if you

    • Thrive on working with brilliant teammates to solve complex, meaningful problems

    • Are passionate about making a social impact and supporting people at their most challenging moments

    • Enjoy cross-functional collaboration with physicians, therapists, data scientists, data analysts and product managers

    Responsibilities
  1. Drive AI Platform Architecture: Design and execute the long-term roadmap for Lyra’s machine learning and generative AI platform, enabling fast, safe, and reliable deployment of frontier models across the company.

  2. Lead AI Infrastructure Vision: Architect end-to-end training, fine-tuning, and low-latency inference platforms, including centralized RAG architecture, vector databases, and enterprise evaluation/guardrail frameworks.

  3. Set Engineering Excellence Standards: Establish organizational standards for the full AI/ML SDLC—from dataset lineage and CI/CD pipelines to automated model evaluation, red-teaming, and production monitoring.

  4. Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Partner closely with Product Management, Data Science, Security, and Clinical leaders to translate strategic clinical goals into foundational AI capability roadmaps.

  5. Mentor and Multiply Impact: Elevate the engineering culture by mentoring Senior ML Engineers, conducting high-leverage architectural reviews, and establishing engineering best practices across teams.

  6. Hands-On Leadership: Lead by example through technical prototypes, critical-path architecture, and strategic coding contributions.

  7. And of course, you will be coding!

  8. Qualifications
  9. 8+ years of experience deploying complex ML/AI solutions into mission-critical production environments, with a proven track record of technical leadership.

  10. Deep System & Software Engineering Expertise: Mastery of Python, RESTful API design, Protobuf, and microservices architecture.

  11. Production AI/ML Infrastructure Mastery: Deep expertise with Docker, Kubernetes, container orchestration, and real-time inference services.

  12. Modern Generative AI Architecture: Hands-on experience designing and deploying RAG pipelines, fine-tuning LLMs, managing vector databases, and building robust LLM evaluation/guardrail frameworks.

  13. Data Layer Systems: Expertise with relational databases, low-latency key-value stores, distributed queueing system architectures (e.g., Celery, Kafka), and data pipeline orchestration.

  14. Cloud Architecture: Strong experience architecting cloud-native solutions on AWS (or equivalent cloud providers).

  15. Strategic Communication: Exceptional ability to distill highly ambiguous technical problems into clear strategic priorities and influence leadership across engineering, product, and business domain disciplines.

  16. Preferred Qualifications
  17. Polyglot Engineering Background: Experience writing high-performance production code in Java or Kotlin.

  18. Healthcare & Sensitive Data Expertise: Experience architecting AI/ML systems within highly regulated environments (HIPAA compliance, SOC2, handling PHI/PII).

  19. MLOps / Platform Productization: Experience building internal developer platforms or ML tooling used by dozens of data scientists and engineers.

  20. Company:  Lyra Health

    Provides AI-powered workforce mental health benefits, transforming access to life-changing mental health care through provider matching and personalized support.
    1001-5000 employees
    Healthcare & Life Sciences
    HQ: United States