Machine Learning Engineer - Agentic AI for Claim Denials

The healthcare payment system is a complex and inefficient maze - healthcare practices leave $125 billion in revenue uncollected each year, lost in the chaos of fragmented financial data, manual workflows, and opaque payer systems. This financial uncertainty leaves practices struggling to stay afloat, while valuable revenue slips through the cracks.

Joyful Health is building the AI-powered financial operating system for healthcare practices. Our mission is to bring the joy back to running a private practice by simplifying financial operations so providers can focus on patient care. We spent 10 months working as fractional CFOs for a dozen practices, doing this work side by side with providers as we developed our product.

We just closed a funding round led by world-class investors and angels including the founders of MongoDB & KAYAK.

We're looking for a talented and ambitious machine learning engineer with 5+ years of experience building production AI systems who's excited to solve one of the toughest challenges in healthcare - automatically resolving claim denials. You'll be the technical lead for our agentic AI platform that autonomously researches, understands, and resolves insurance claim denials, helping healthcare practices recover millions in lost revenue.

Insurance claim denials cost healthcare practices $125 billion annually, and resolving them requires deep expertise in medical billing, payer rules, and claim documentation. Today, billing managers spend hours manually researching each denial, gathering supporting documentation, and crafting appeals. We're building an agentic AI system that automates this entire workflow - from denial classification and root cause analysis, to evidence gathering and appeal letter generation.

As a machine learning engineer, you'll architect and build the intelligent agents that power this system. You'll design multi-agent workflows that collaborate to interpret complex denial reasons, retrieve relevant clinical and billing information through RAG systems, reason about payer policies, and generate compelling appeals. This is a greenfield opportunity to build a production agentic system that will directly impact the financial health of healthcare practices.

You should be comfortable (and excited!) about working in a fast-paced, early-stage startup environment where you'll be able to wear many hats and take on new challenges as they arise. This is a great opportunity for someone who wants to work on something extremely challenging at the intersection of AI and healthcare.

This role is full-time. We're looking for candidates based in NYC.

At Joyful Health, we’re on a mission to fix one of the most broken systems in healthcare. Joining us means having the opportunity to make a direct, meaningful impact on the lives of clinicians and the financial health of their practices. Here’s what you can expect from working with us:

Meaningful Impact You’ll be tackling one of the most complex challenges in healthcare—helping practices thrive in a chaotic financial landscape. Your work will directly contribute to solving one of the most hair on fire problems for providers, ensuring that they can focus on what they do best: caring for patients.

Autonomy & Ownership As an early team member, you’ll have significant autonomy and the chance to shape our company from the ground up. You’ll have ownership over your work and the freedom to challenge the status quo in an environment that values initiative and creativity.

Growth & Learning We’re a small, ambitious team with big goals, which means you’ll be constantly learning and growing. You’ll take on new challenges, expand your skill set, and have direct access to experienced founders and advisors who are invested in your development. We also offer stipends for professional development courses & books (that we often will partake in together!) so we can all continuously grow.

Competitive Compensation & Equity We believe that our team is our most valuable asset. We offer competitive compensation packages, strong equity, and the opportunity to share in the success of Joyful Health. We want you to feel supported, both financially and professionally, as we grow together.

Be Your Best Self We provide the benefits you need to stay happy and healthy, including comprehensive healthcare benefits, unlimited PTO (with a minimum of 10 days off a year), and flexibility so you can take care of yourself. We also organize regular team off-sites and events to ensure that even as we tackle big problems we enjoy the journey.