Staff Data Scientist
Heartflow · San Francisco, CA
$220,000–$280,000from the description
Jul 20, 2026
San Francisco, CA
Jul 22, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor data science role at a cardiac AI company, focused on shaping how medical imaging data is collected, curated, and used to train and validate AI algorithms. Day-to-day work spans designing large-scale annotation campaigns, building data management and monitoring infrastructure in partnership with MLOps, and applying statistical methods to evaluate model performance across patient populations. Best suited to someone with deep experience in medical imaging or computer vision and a track record of leading data strategy on production ML systems.
Staff level · 7+ years · San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA · Master's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 10 people in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 2–15
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $189,150 (middle half $152,859–$224,286). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The posting titles this role 'Staff Data Scientist' and the scope — cross-functional technical leadership across multiple teams, setting data strategy and annotation frameworks for AI algorithms — genuinely supports a Staff-level classification, not merely Senior.
Degree requirement is Masters or PhD; Masters is the minimum hard gate. The PhD path reduces the experience requirement from 7+ to 5+ years; the overall years minimum is set to 7 (the Masters-path minimum).
VTK/ITK and 3DSlicer/MITK are explicitly called out as 'a plus' in the posting, so they are marked preferred. VTK and ITK are listed as interchangeable alternatives; 3DSlicer and MITK are similarly paired.
CT and vascular imaging experience is described as 'highly preferred,' not required — marked preferred accordingly.
Agentic/generative AI proficiency is listed under a '(Preferred)' heading — marked preferred.
MLOps appears only in a collaborative context ('Partner with MLOps') rather than as a required skill of the candidate; included as preferred given the close working relationship implied.
The location is tagged #LI-Hybrid; the company is headquartered in Redwood City, CA (San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara CBSA). No explicit city is stated in the posting, but Heartflow's known HQ is used for the metro.
Compensation is stated as a base salary range of $220,000–$280,000 plus bonus and equity.
Read the full posting
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