Sword Health is moving healthcare from a human-first approach to an AI-first model through its AI Care platform, delivering world-class care anytime and anywhere while substantially lowering costs for payers, self-insured employers, national health systems, and other healthcare organizations. Sword started by reimagining pain care with AI at the center and has since expanded into women’s health, movement health, and, more recently, mental health. Since 2020, more than 700,000 members across three continents have completed 10 million AI sessions, helping Sword’s 1,000+ enterprise clients avoid over $1 billion in unnecessary healthcare expenses. Supported by 42 clinical studies and more than 44 patents, Sword Health has raised over $500 million from leading investors, including Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Transformation Capital, and Founders Fund. Learn more at https://swordhealth.com.

At Sword Health, our AI Research team is central to our mission of freeing two billion people from pain. We build and refine foundational AI models across multiple modalities (such as text, vision, and speech) to deliver a highly personalized and effective care experience. Our research work covers the full lifecycle—from collecting, generating, and labeling data to designing and running experiments and rigorously testing our models. As an AI Researcher, you won’t only advance the state of the art—you’ll build the core intelligence behind our platform and directly help people live healthier, pain-free lives. We provide the computing power, data, and talent you need to do your best work.

What you’ll be doing:
– Contribute to every stage of developing our advanced large deep learning models
– Prepare datasets, design architectures, implement solutions, and train and evaluate models to improve our products
– Collaborate with engineering and clinical teams to turn cutting-edge AI research into practical applications with clinical impact
– Work toward long-term ambitious research goals while identifying immediate milestones
– Turn new research ideas into working code
– Shape progress in relevant research communities through publications

What you need to have:
– A PhD, or enrollment in a PhD program with the degree completed before starting employment, in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or another highly technical field
– A strong record of research publications in peer-reviewed conferences or journals
– Proficiency in Python and experience with common machine learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow)
– Demonstrated ability to design experiments and analyze and interpret results
– The ability to obtain work authorization in Portugal, or already having it

What we would love to see:
– Strong research credentials and first-author publications at top-tier AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, COLM, ACL, EMNLP)
– Deep expertise in one or more areas such as Large Language Models (LLMs), multimodal learning (vision, speech), deep learning, or reinforcement learning (RL)
– Alternatively, a proven record of outstanding research contributions in another highly quantitative field (e.g., Physics, Applied Mathematics, Computational Statistics), along with a strong passion to apply your skills to AI for healthcare
– Industry experience during or after your PhD, such as research internships
– Experience taking research ideas from concept to implementation, including developing and debugging complex systems
– Strong communication skills and a history of effective collaboration on research projects
– A broader record of research excellence, shown through grants, fellowships, patents, meaningful open-source contributions, or relevant internships

Location:
We welcome applications from across Europe and the UK. We prefer candidates based in London, UK, or Lisbon/Porto, Portugal, where our research team is primarily located and where we have active offices, but exceptional candidates elsewhere in Europe will be considered.

Portugal – Sword Benefits & Perks:
– Health, dental, and vision insurance
– Meal allowance
– Equity shares
– Remote work allowance
– Flexible working hours
– Work from home
– Discretionary vacation
– Snacks and beverages
– English classes

Note: This role does not offer relocation assistance. Candidates must have a valid EU visa and be based in Portugal.

Sword Health follows applicable federal and state civil rights laws and does not discriminate based on Age, Ancestry, Color, Citizenship, Gender, Gender expression, Gender identity, Gender information, Marital status, Medical condition, National origin, Physical or mental disability, Pregnancy, Race, Religion, Caste, Sexual orientation, or Veteran status.