Founding Engineer - AI/ML (Speech & Cognitive Assessment Focus)

About Us

We are a mission-driven AI healthcare startup developing innovative solutions to improve cognitive health and care coordination. Founded by an experienced entrepreneur with a decade of dedication to solving challenges in dementia care, our goal is to use AI-driven speech and language analysis to enable earlier detection and better patient outcomes. We are in the early stages of selecting our tech stack, focusing on applying existing generative AI technologies to transform the way cognitive assessments are conducted.

Role & and Responsibilities

As a Founding Engineer, you will be responsible for designing and developing the AI-driven cognitive screening and assessment platform, focusing on speech and natural language analysis. You will help select our AI/ML tech stack and build the foundation for speech-based cognitive assessments, leveraging LLMs, NLP, and speech processing models. This is an opportunity to shape the core technology of an AI-driven healthcare solution from the ground up.

• Lead the selection of our tech stack, ensuring scalability, security, and AI integration.
• Develop speech processing models for cognitive health assessments, analyzing speech patterns, fluency, pauses, and language structure to detect cognitive decline.
• Apply existing generative AI models (e.g., LLMs, transformers, speech-to-text AI) to enhance healthcare decision-making.
• Build real-time speech-to-text and voice analysis pipelines, integrating acoustic, prosodic, and linguistic features for cognitive assessment.
• Implement NLP models to analyze spoken and written language patterns in patient interactions.
• Work on multi-modal AI approaches, integrating speech, text, and behavioural data for more comprehensive cognitive screening.
• Design and implement secure, cloud-based architectures that comply with HIPAA and healthcare data regulations.
• Collaborate with data scientists, neuroscientists, and clinicians to refine AI applications for cognitive health.
• Drive best practices in AI ethics, model explainability, and bias mitigation for speech-based assessments.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering, with a strong background in speech processing, NLP, and generative AI.
• Expertise in speech analysis, including automatic speech recognition (ASR), speech-to-text, speaker diarization, prosody analysis, and sentiment detection.
• Experience with speech AI frameworks (e.g., DeepSpeech, Whisper, Kaldi, Mozilla TTS, OpenAI Whisper).
• Proficiency in machine learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, Hugging Face, OpenAI APIs).
• Strong understanding of acoustic modelling, phonetics, and computational linguistics in healthcare applications.
• Hands-on experience in cloud-based AI deployments (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and API development.
• Familiarity with FHIR/HL7, HIPAA compliance, and healthcare data security best practices.
• Entrepreneurial mindset—experience in early-stage startups or AI product development is a plus.

Benefits

• Competitive salary + founding equity (significant ownership stake)
• Performance-based equity increases tied to key product milestones
• Salary growth potential as the company scales
• Flexible, remote-first work environment
• Opportunity to work directly with a mission-driven founder with deep experience in cognitive health innovation
• Chance to shape the AI-driven future of cognitive health and dementia care

To Apply:

We want to hear from you if you're a passionate and talented engineer ready to make a difference!