---
title: 'Postdoctoral Clinical Research Scientist at Slingshot AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/postdoctoral-clinical-research-scientist-slingshot-ai-new-york-bnx7y52nhj90'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Postdoctoral Clinical Research Scientist at Slingshot AI

- **Company:** Slingshot AI
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-08-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/slingshotai/58e97bf3-5abc-4a0a-99b9-70ce495d1d31

## Job description

Slingshot AI

Slingshot AI is the team behind Ash, the first AI designed for mental health. Our mission is to make support more accessible and help people change their lives in the ways they want.

We’re building a world-class team by empowering individuals with the autonomy, flexibility, and support they need to do their best work. We dream big, iterate fast, and care deeply. If that sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you.

Our team spans machine learning, product, engineering, conversational design, clinical, growth, and operations, with offices in both New York City and London.

We're a well-funded Series A company, having raised $93M from Andreessen Horowitz, Radical Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, plus top-tier tech investors involved in ElevenLabs, Captions, Shopify, Plaid, Notion, Canva, Twitch, Airtable, and many others.

## The Role

We are hiring a Postdoctoral Clinical Research Scientist to build the evidence base for AI-delivered mental health care. Reporting to the Head of Research, you will design and run the studies that tell us whether Ash is safe, whether it works, and where it needs to get better, then publish what we learn.

This is a fixed-term role of one to two years, based in New York City (hybrid), with potential to convert. If you're interested in pursuing psychology licensure in New York, we'll support you in getting there too.

The field is moving faster than the literature. Your job is to make sure our science stays ahead of it: to invent evaluation methods where none exist yet, to run rigorous studies on a product that ships weekly, and to work shoulder to shoulder with product, engineering, and machine learning so that what you find actually changes what we build.

## Key responsibilities

- Design, run, and analyze clinical studies on AI-based mental health tools: RCTs, observational studies, product-embedded experiments, and HEOR studies assessing cost-effectiveness and healthcare utilization impact.
- Build and validate novel evaluation methods for conversational AI quality and safety, including LLM-as-judge frameworks for scoring clinical fidelity, empathy, and risk at scale.
- Lead manuscript preparation for peer-reviewed journals and represent our research at conferences.
- Collaborate across clinical, product, engineering, legal, and policy to make sure our research is both rigorous and actionable, and that findings reach the people who can act on them.
- Translate what we learn into sharper measurement: what we track, how we define outcomes, and what evidence we need next.

## About you

- You have a PhD in Clinical Psychology or a related field.
- You have a strong track record designing and executing clinical research, with solid grounding in methodology, language data analysis, psychometrics, and statistical analysis (R, Python, or similar).
- You have a publication record in peer-reviewed journals.
- You're familiar with evidence-based psychotherapy frameworks and clinical outcome measurement.
- Experience with digital health, telehealth, or AI/ML applications in clinical care is a strong plus.
- You're a strong communicator who can translate clinical findings for non-clinical audiences without losing the nuance that matters.
- You're comfortable working fast and iteratively, in a field where the research has to pull ahead of the technology rather than trail behind it.
- You have genuine conviction about the mission. This work only matters if the people doing it believe it does.

What we offer:

- A chance to join a passionate tight-knit team working on something to change the world
- Competitive compensation (top of personal market)
- Travel between our NYC / London offices
- Usual startup perks like free lunch and coffee in office + generous learning budget
- We cover your personal therapy

## About Slingshot AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Slingshot AI is an AI research lab building the first foundation model for psychology, powering its consumer product "Ash," an AI designed for mental health support.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Daniel Cahn and Neil Parikh

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Mental Health AI, Wellness and Fitness Services
- Target customers: B2C (individuals seeking mental health support) and B2B (organizations needing AI-assisted crisis text response and AI counseling)
- Mission or purpose statement: "To make mental healthcare more accessible and help people change their lives in the ways they want."

## Products & Services
- **[Ash]**: The first AI designed for mental health. A consumer-facing product that functions as a conversational AI therapist, built on Slingshot’s proprietary foundation model for psychology. It focuses on increasing user autonomy, competence, and relatedness, integrating approaches like CBT, DBT, ACT, gestalt, and psychodynamic therapy.
- **[Foundation Model for Psychology]**: A task-specific generative model trained on large-scale psychological data, designed to respect individual value systems and cultural norms, powering both Ash and B2B use cases like AI-assisted crisis text response.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — $136M (across multiple rounds including seed and Series A)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Radical Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Felicis (led seed round), plus top-tier tech investors involved in ElevenLabs, Captions, Shopify, Plaid, Notion, Canva, Twitch, and Airtable. Also partnered with One Mind Accelerator.
- **Growth Signals**: 25,000+ beta testers (including many therapists); 50,000+ people have tested Ash; 80% headcount growth year-over-year (34 employees currently, up from ~16); offices in both New York City and London; active job postings up 33% year-over-year.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Unique foundation model for psychology**: Unlike general-purpose AI assistants, Slingshot’s model is purpose-built for mental health, integrating multiple therapeutic approaches (CBT, DBT, ACT, psychodynamic, gestalt) rather than a single "cure-all."
- **Strong clinical and ethical foundation**: The team includes a Clinical R&D Lead (Dr. Derrick Hull, formerly of Talkspace) and a Head of Safety (Mark Ungless), ensuring the product is built with clinical rigor and safety.
- **Respect for autonomy**: The AI is explicitly designed not to create dependency; it aims to increase the user’s sense of control and connection, differentiating it from other AI assistants.
- **Top-tier investor backing**: Backed by a16z and Radical Ventures, signaling strong confidence in the team and mission.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling access to mental health support globally by continuing to train and improve their foundation model.
- Expanding the user base of Ash (currently free) and proving its efficacy at scale.
- Building a world-class team across ML, product, engineering, conversational design, clinical, growth, and operations in both New York and London.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven work**: "Every action we take helps a real person, in the real world." The company is deeply focused on making a tangible impact on mental health.
- **Culture**: Values include "celebrate divergence and value authenticity," "move fast and embrace the unknown," "treat each other like adults," and "always in search of truth." Emphasis on autonomy, ownership, and fast iteration.
- **Work model**: In-office (employees work from physical offices in NYC or London). Offices are described as collaborative spaces with meals and drinks provided.
- **Perks**: Competitive salary, significant equity, unlimited holiday, L&D budget (courses/books/conferences), therapy coverage, private health insurance, company off-sites, office meals and drinks.
- **Team**: Small but growing fast (34 people, +80% YoY). Team spans multiple countries (US, UK, Canada) and departments (technical, product, design, clinical, operations). High ownership and impact for early employees.

## Sources
1. [slingshotai.com](https://slingshotai.com/)
2. [slingshotai.com/careers](https://slingshotai.com/careers)
3. [linkedin.com/company/slingshotai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/slingshotai)
4. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/slingshot-6)
5. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/slingshot-ai)

## Other roles at Slingshot AI

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- [Chief of Staff, GTM](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-of-staff-gtm-slingshot-ai-new-york-t3edqnq4qx9t) — New York, NY
- [Member of Technical Staff, Mobile](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-mobile-slingshot-ai-london-xq0xh7mqg6sv) — London, United Kingdom
- [Technical Ex-Founder](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-ex-founder-slingshot-ai-london-bwma1f7fn1zg) — London, United Kingdom