Head of Clinical Development - Pulse
About 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
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.
AI Clinical Development, Evaluation, and Governance
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.
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.
*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.
Total Compensation Range
$108,920
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$171,160 USD