Principal Research Scientist, Clinical Research

About the Role

We’re looking for a Principal Research Scientist to build and scale Clinical Research at Headway. In this role you will establish, drive and execute on the research and publication strategy for Headway’s Clinical Research team.

The Clinical Research team at Headway was founded in mid 2025 and has already generated meaningful results and produced rigorous manuscripts that are under peer-review. You would join as the first dedicated clinical researcher to formalize and scale this function for Headway by expanding its scope and vision.

You will own end-to-end planning of the research roadmap in conjunction with Clinical Leadership at Headway. You will help execute this roadmap through project development, evidence generation and data analysis, and collaboration on peer-reviewed publications and presentations to build Headway's credibility among payers, providers, and patients. Your work will focus on demonstrating the tangible results and impact of Headway's network through rigorous, public-facing research. You will efficiently manage the budget for clinical research and, as needed, make the case for additional investments in analytics, outside experts, conference attendance, or other research resources.

This role requires strong collaboration, leadership skills, clear communication, and the ability to execute both independently and within cross-functional teams. You will build relationships with many stakeholders internally from Product, Data, Engineering, Operations, and Marketing. You’ll have high visibility with senior leadership and a chance to directly influence corporate strategy and growth.

This is a unique opportunity to bring analytical strategy, scientific rigor, and human-centered insight to a mission that truly matters — expanding access to effective, personalized mental health care.

You will

• Scale the clinical research function at Headway, developing quarterly roadmaps for the research team, aligning clinical research resources, and overseeing execution of clinical research in collaboration with leadership
• Lead projects from conceptualization to execution, driving deep analytical insight through strategic analysis, causal inference, and experimentation
• Develop and drive the vision for clinical research including our standards for analysis and experimentation
• Tackle projects yourself, including strategic analysis to strengthen our vision and resolve for key initiatives. Translate complex insights into clear, data-driven recommendations
• As the foundational hire for this role at Headway, you will need to navigate ambiguity in defining responsibilities and success criteria
• Influence senior leadership and have a chance to directly influence strategy and growth

You would be a great fit if you have

• 10+ years of health services research, clinical epidemiology, or health economics research, including leading projects and experience in the end-to-end peer review publication process with demonstrated publication record in studies of mental health.
• You will have led research teams, overseen research staff, and successfully obtained grant funding. Your CV will reflect this experience with publications in high-impact journals. This likely means you have an advanced degree in a research-related field.
• Experience working on patient health outcomes, health economic outcomes, patient and provider satisfaction outcomes, enhancing care delivery for providers, and/or working within a health insurance landscape
• Experience partnering with cross-functional partners across product, marketing, engineering, operations
• Significant experience with real-world health care data, including health insurance claims and EHR data
• Strong background in experimentation; able to both set strategy and coach others
• Significant experience with data and analytics, including working with large datasets. This likely means hands-on technical fluency in SQL and Python/R, with experience working with modern data stacks (e.g., Snowflake, dbt, Looker)
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills — able to “translate” technical insights into business impact