Head of Clinical Development - Pulse
Sword Health · Remote · United States · 19d ago
At Sword, we’re building AI to heal billions and unlock humanity’s full potential. In doing so, we’re pioneering AI Care, a fundamentally new approach to healthcare built for medical reasoning, safety, and real-time treatment, not generic technology applied after the fact. As both a clinical-centric frontier AI lab and an applied AI platform, Sword is reimagining how care is delivered at scale, removing traditional barriers like appointments, waiting rooms, and stigma so more people can access the care they need—and ultimately get back to lives lived in full.
Since 2020, Sword has expanded across physical therapy, women’s health, cardiometabolic, and mental health, and is now moving beyond the session to a fully AI-native, 24/7 care program that brings physical activity, therapeutic exercise, psychotherapy, nutrition, and behavior change into one connected experience. More than 700,000 members across three continents have completed over 10 million AI sessions, helping 1,000+ enterprise clients avoid more than $1 billion in unnecessary healthcare costs. Backed by 42 clinical studies, 44+ patents, and more than $500 million raised from leading investors including Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, and Founders Fund, Sword is defining a new standard for healthcare.
AI Proficiency at Sword
AI fluency is a core expectation at Sword. Every candidate is assessed against our three-level framework — be ready to share real examples of how AI is already part of how you work.
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Explorer (Level 1) — Uses AI daily to boost personal productivity
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Builder (Level 2) — Creates workflows and tools that elevate the whole team
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Integrator (Level 3) — Embeds AI into products and processes at scale
Every hire must demonstrate at least Level 1. The expected level will vary depending on the seniority of the role.
Role
We are seeking a Head of Clinical Development to drive clinical outcomes in Pulse, Sword's AI cardiometabolic care solution spanning hypertension, pre-diabetes, and GLP-1 support. This is a strategic and tactical role working closely with Product, Go-to-Market, Clinical Ops and, Clinical Affairs & Research team, reporting directly to the General Manager and working closely with the Chief Medical Officer and SVP for Clinical & Regulatory Affairs.
You will partner crossfunctionally to make sure clinical requirements are reflected accurately in product features, AI behavior, operational workflows, member experiences, and external communications. The role covers real breadth: clinical program architecture, external clinical credibility and thought leadership for go-to-market, clinical input into product development, clinical governance of Pulse's AI-driven three-way chat experience, and clinical quality standards for Clinical Operations.
What you’ll be doing
Product Development
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Set clinical validation standards for new features, workflows, interventions, and AI-supported experiences before and after launch.
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Bring the clinical lens to feature assessment alongside Product, calibrating the level of clinical rigor to the actual risk of each feature so the team can move quickly with confidence.
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Provide clinical expertise in the scoping and refinement of PRDs.
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Review and clinically interpret member and clinician feedback, maintaining a tight loop back to roadmap and program decisions.
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Monitor and interpret clinical outcomes to identify drivers of improvement, decline, or variation, and direct program, protocol, product, workflow, or training changes in response.
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Surface clinical constraints early, flagging where a solution will be clinically wrong or difficult before development begins, so the team solves the right problem instead of building the wrong thing well.
AI Clinical Development, Evaluation, and Governance
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Help define the intended clinical role, therapeutic boundaries, and prohibited behaviors of Pulse's AI-supported experiences.
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Work with Product and AI on both the prompting layer (guidelines, guardrails) and the harness layer (knowledge base, escalations).
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Co-develop the clinical components of evaluation rubrics, acceptance criteria, release thresholds, and annotation requirements.
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Define the clinical content needed for annotator training, including example annotations.
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Clinically interpret annotator feedback and help determine, with AI and Product, whether training, evaluation criteria, prompts, guardrails, or product behavior need to change.
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Contribute to post-launch clinical monitoring, interpret findings with Product and AI, and help determine what action to take.
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Represent Pulse's clinical perspective on relevant internal AI monitoring and governance boards.
What you need to have
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Licensed clinician (MD, DO, NP, RD, or PharmD) with 8+ years of clinical experience, including at least 3 years in a clinical leadership role within digital health, health-tech, or value-based care.
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Deep expertise in cardiometabolic conditions: hypertension, pre-diabetes and diabetes, obesity, and GLP-1 therapeutics.
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Experience owning a clinical outcomes framework, including defining metrics, evidence standards, and how outcomes translate into commercial value.
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A track record of being the external clinical voice for a product: comfortable in front of CMOs, health plan medical directors, and clinical audiences at conferences and in due-diligence processes.
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Experience partnering directly with product and engineering teams to translate clinical requirements into features, workflows, and AI behavior, not just reviewing what others build.
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Comfort defining clinical guardrails and evaluation criteria for AI-supported or AI-driven care experiences.
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Strong writing and narrative skills. You will personally author whitepapers, talk tracks, and clinical claims language that holds up under scrutiny.
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Comfort with ambiguity and building a function's clinical infrastructure from a limited starting point.
*The range below reflects base, variable, and equity for this role.
This is a starting point, not a ceiling — once someone joins and proves they're outlier talent, we adjust quickly to make sure their compensation matches their impact.
Job titles may span more than one career level, so actual pay depends on skills, qualifications, experience, location, and market demand, among other factors. The range reflects base salary plus any variable, bonus, or sales incentives, and our estimate of the value of private company stock options where applicable. It's subject to change, and future stock value isn't guaranteed. Sword also offers additional benefits beyond total compensation.