Since 2020, Sword has expanded across Musculoskeletal, 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 1 million members across three continents have completed over 15 million AI sessions, helping 2,000+ enterprise clients avoid more than $1 billion in unnecessary healthcare costs. Backed by 59 clinical studies, 43 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.
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.
Explorer (Level 1) — Uses AI daily to boost personal productivity
Builder (Level 2) — Creates workflows and tools that elevate the whole team
Integrator (Level 3) — Embeds AI into products and processes at scale
AI fluency is a core expectation at Sword Health. 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.
Every hire must demonstrate at least Level 1. The expected level will vary depending on the seniority of the role.
What you'll be doing
Set clinical validation standards for new features, workflows, interventions, and AI-supported experiences before and after launch.
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.
Provide clinical expertise in the scoping and refinement of PRDs.
Review and clinically interpret member and clinician feedback, maintaining a tight loop back to roadmap and program decisions.
Monitor and interpret clinical outcomes to identify drivers of improvement, decline, or variation, and direct program, protocol, product, workflow, or training changes in response.
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.
Help define the intended clinical role, therapeutic boundaries, and prohibited behaviors of Pulse's AI-supported experiences.
Work with Product and AI on both the prompting layer (guidelines, guardrails) and the harness layer (knowledge base, escalations).
Co-develop the clinical components of evaluation rubrics, acceptance criteria, release thresholds, and annotation requirements.
Define the clinical content needed for annotator training, including example annotations.
Clinically interpret annotator feedback and help determine, with AI and Product, whether training, evaluation criteria, prompts, guardrails, or product behavior need to change.
Contribute to post-launch clinical monitoring, interpret findings with Product and AI, and help determine what action to take.
Represent Pulse's clinical perspective on relevant internal AI monitoring and governance boards.
Product Development
AI Clinical Development, Evaluation, and Governance
What You Need to Have
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.
Deep expertise in cardiometabolic conditions: hypertension, pre-diabetes and diabetes, obesity, and GLP-1 therapeutics.
Experience owning a clinical outcomes framework, including defining metrics, evidence standards, and how outcomes translate into commercial value.
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.
Experience partnering directly with product and engineering teams to translate clinical requirements into features, workflows, and AI behavior, not just reviewing what others build.
Comfort defining clinical guardrails and evaluation criteria for AI-supported or AI-driven care experiences.
Strong writing and narrative skills. You will personally author whitepapers, talk tracks, and clinical claims language that holds up under scrutiny.
Comfort with ambiguity and building a function's clinical infrastructure from a limited starting point.
What We Would Love to See
Third-party clinical partnerships, including protocol definition and clinical service agreements.
Direct experience with AI-supported or AI-native care delivery, including prompt design, guardrails, or evaluation rubrics for clinical AI systems.
Familiarity with cardiometabolic prescribing protocols, titration, and medication management in a digital health setting.
Experience with outcomes-based or value-based contracting models and how clinical evidence supports pricing.
Prior experience at a high-growth digital health company navigating rapid scaling and shifting priorities.
These compensation bands are just the starting point. Once someone joins and proves they’re outlier talent, we adjust quickly to ensure their compensation aligns with their impact.
Our job titles may span more than one career level. Actual pay is determined by skills, qualifications, experience, location, market demand, and other factors. Compensation details listed in this posting reflect the base salary and any potential variable, bonus or sales incentives, and the Company’s estimation of the value of private company stock options, if applicable. The pay range is subject to change, future value of company stock options is not guaranteed, and compensation may be modified in the future. In addition to our total compensation, Sword offers a number of benefits as listed below.
Skills Required
- Licensed clinician with an MD, DO, NP, RD, or PharmD credential
- 8 or more years of clinical experience
- At least 3 years of clinical leadership experience in digital health, health technology, or value-based care
- Deep expertise in hypertension, pre-diabetes, diabetes, obesity, and GLP-1 therapeutics
- Experience owning a clinical outcomes framework, including metrics, evidence standards, and commercial value translation
- Experience serving as an external clinical spokesperson for a product
- Experience partnering directly with product and engineering teams to translate clinical requirements into features, workflows, and AI behavior
- Experience defining clinical guardrails and evaluation criteria for AI-supported or AI-driven care experiences
- Strong writing and narrative skills, including authoring whitepapers, talk tracks, and clinical claims language
- Ability to work with ambiguity and build clinical infrastructure from a limited starting point
- Experience establishing third-party clinical partnerships, defining protocols, and negotiating clinical service agreements
- Direct experience with AI-supported or AI-native care delivery, including prompt design, guardrails, or evaluation rubrics
- Familiarity with cardiometabolic prescribing protocols, titration, and medication management in digital health
- Experience with outcomes-based or value-based contracting and clinical evidence supporting pricing
- Experience at a high-growth digital health company
- Legal right to work in the United States
SWORD Health Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about SWORD Health and has not been reviewed or approved by SWORD Health.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage includes comprehensive medical, dental, and vision, with HSA eligibility and optional accident, hospital, and critical-illness coverage. Life and AD&D insurance are also part of the package.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time off is structured as discretionary (unlimited) PTO alongside paid company holidays. Remote-first work and flexible hours further support taking time when needed.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Free access to the company’s digital therapist is provided for employees and their families. This wellness-oriented perk complements core healthcare coverage.
SWORD Health Insights
What We Do
SWORD Health is the world’s fastest growing virtual musculoskeletal (MSK) care provider, on a mission to free two billion people from chronic and post-surgical pain. The company’s clinical-grade virtual therapy platform pairs expert physical therapists with FDA-listed wearable technology to deliver a personalized treatment plan that is more effective, easier and less expensive than traditional physical therapy. SWORD Health believes in the power of people to recover at home, without resorting to imaging, surgeries or opioids. Since launching in 2015, SWORD Health has worked with insurers, health systems and employers in the U.S, Europe and Australia to make quality physical therapy more accessible to everyone.
