AI Tools Engineer

At PicnicHealth, we're building the future of non-interventional clinical research, powered by AI and centered on patients. Our mission is to make it radically easier, faster, and more affordable to perform clinical trials and get better treatments to patients. We're replacing the legacy, services-heavy model with a modern, AI-first approach that unlocks insights from rich, multi-modal data—from clinical notes and imaging to lab results—at scale.  By engaging patients directly through our personal health assistant, PicnicAI, which meets them where they’re at and delights them along the way (with an industry leading NPS of 76), patients participate actively in the research they care about.

PicnicHealth is already a trusted partner to 7 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies. Our work spans 40+ disease areas and has supported over 60 peer-reviewed publications, including an FDA submission that incorporates PicnicHealth data.

Founded in 2014, we’ve raised $100M+ from top investors like Amplify Partners, Felicis Ventures, B Capital Group, and Y Combinator. Our business running non-interventional studies more than doubled last year, and we’re growing even faster in 2025. We’re a team of doctors, patients, data nerds, engineers, and builders, reimagining how clinical research works — and we’re just getting started!

The Opportunity

As our first AI Tools Engineer, your mission is to enable PicnicHealth to operate dramatically more effectively with AI. You’ll identify promising AI tools, quickly prototype integrations, build robust yet lightweight workflows, and ensure these tools reliably enhance day-to-day work across every function. Your success will be measured by how effectively your teammates adopt these tools, automate routine tasks, and focus their energy on high-value work.

What You’ll Do

• Discover, test, and deploy AI SaaS products: Rapidly evaluate tools and roll out those that provide immediate impact.
• Build streamlined workflows and agents: Use no-code/low-code platforms (Retool, Gumloop, Zapier) or deploy quick Python/TypeScript services on platforms like Cloud Run or Vercel when needed.
• Integrate widely-used tools: Ensure seamless integration of PicnicHealth sources of context, e.g. Asana, Gmail, Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, Linear, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, Salesforce.
• Own reliability and performance: Actively monitor and ensure the uptime of AI-driven workflows. When something breaks, you'll know first.
• Drive adoption: View success as the tools you deploy being adopted and driving their intended outcomes. 
• Educate and empower: Lead practical workshops, regular office hours, and develop internal resources so every teammate confidently becomes an AI power user.
• Stay ahead of the curve: Keep PicnicHealth at the forefront by continually testing and iterating with new tools and practices.

You’ll Thrive in This Role If You:

• Have a CS or Business background with equivalent experience with demonstrated ability to ship practical, functional projects quickly.
• Prototype ideas using LLMs and automation tools as naturally as breathing
• Can spin up a small web service but prefer rapid solutions or SaaS tools that avoid unnecessary complexity
• Care most about delivering business successes, and enjoy making others more effective. You’ll feel successful when your internal customers thrive.
• Take pride in your desire to digging into the details of messy & sometimes mundane business processes to make sure you deliver real value 
• Are plugged into AI spaces (Twitter/X, Discord) and can separate the signal from the noise.
• Follow The Way of Code, and believe people should apply vibing to many parts of life beyond coding
• Have excellent judgment, strong communication skills, and a bias for action

Nice-to-haves: Hackathon background, experience with Retool (or similar low/no-code tools), knowledge of vector databases, comfort with regulated data environments.

We expect all team members to be amazing in their roles and, ultimately, to move the PicnicHealth mission forward.

What is clinical research and why will PicnicHealth win?

Clinical research is the industry responsible for conducting studies to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs and treatments. Better trials lead to faster, more cost-effective drug development, ultimately resulting in more and improved treatments for patients. However, the process remains highly inefficient. Trials are a major bottleneck in drug development, and the promising advancements in biotech cannot translate to real patient impact unless clinical research becomes faster and more efficient

The industry runs on outdated technology and manual processes. Research sites (hospitals, academic centers, doctors' offices) are overburdened and under-resourced. Contract research organizations (CROs), the organizations that traditionally run clinical trials for life sciences companies, typically throw hundreds-of-thousands of man-hours wrangling sites and cobbling together vendor software. 

PicnicHealth has built technology that uniquely positions us to run faster, cheaper, and more flexible studies while removing burden from sites:

• • PicnicAI (trained on 350M+ clinician annotations over 100k+ patient records) is the only system that can effectively access and structure all participant EMR data trials need
  • Our AI health assistant (NPS of 76 in 2024) guides participants through study activities and enables most to be done at home
  • We're an integrated solution — virtual site, CRO, and software platform — with AI built in from the ground up, initially focusing on non-interventional research. 

The other perks & benefits you get when you work at PicnicHealth   

We pay competitive salaries. Everyone on the team is an owner: all full time employees get competitive equity.

Target Base Salary Range: $120K – $150K 

The base salary PicnicHealth offers may vary depending upon the scope, complexity, and autonomy of the position and on the candidate’s job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

We’re a remote first company, with teammates spread across the US. We support in-person gatherings, including co-working spaces and multi-day onsites, to build connections and move forward strategic initiatives. Expect to travel 2-4 times a year.  For our team members in the Bay Area, who prefer to work in person we can offer a hybrid set up to work from the SF office on a flexible schedule.

You also get:

• Comprehensive benefits including above market Health, Dental, Vision
• Family friendly environment 
• Flexible time off
• 401k plan
• Free PicnicHealth account
• Equipment and internet funds for home office set up 
• Wellness Stipend

PicnicHealth is committed to promoting an inclusive work environment free of discrimination and harassment. We value a diverse and balanced team where everyone can belong.