Patient Operations Manager

At PicnicHealth, we're building the future of non-interventional clinical research, powered by AI and centered on patients. Our mission is to make it radically easier, faster, and more affordable to perform clinical trials and get better treatments to patients. We're replacing the legacy, services-heavy model with a modern, AI-first approach that unlocks insights from rich, multi-modal data—from clinical notes and imaging to lab results—at scale.  By engaging patients directly through our personal health assistant, PicnicAI, which meets them where they’re at and delights them along the way (with an industry leading NPS of 76), patients participate actively in the research they care about.

PicnicHealth is already a trusted partner to 7 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies. Our work spans 40+ disease areas and has supported over 60 peer-reviewed publications, including an FDA submission that incorporates PicnicHealth data.

Founded in 2014, we’ve raised $100M+ from top investors like Amplify Partners, Felicis Ventures, B Capital Group, and Y Combinator. Our business running non-interventional studies more than doubled last year, and we’re growing even faster in 2025. We’re a team of doctors, patients, data nerds, engineers, and builders, reimagining how clinical research works — and we’re just getting started!

The Opportunity

As the Patient Operations Manager, you will serve as the operational owner for day-to-day patient engagement activities, responsible for the planning and execution of processes that sustain high participant activity completion and retention rates for a large portfolio of non-interventional research studies. You will manage ongoing patient engagement activities for all studies and study-agnostic programs to foster long-term involvement.

Reporting to the Patient Engagement Lead, you will be responsible for ensuring patients feel supported and engaged throughout their research journey once studies are active. You will oversee a team of contractors who are responsible for executing ongoing engagement tactics, including communications, reminders, and chart reviews, with the aim of maximizing retention, medical record retrievals, and primary data participation. In coordination with the Patient Engagement Manager, you will implement strategies to improve primary data completion rates. You will also support engagement initiatives that are not tied to a specific study, such as patient support, VIP account oversight, and signup triage for non-study accounts. 

At PicnicHealth, AI is at the core of everything we do. We're looking for individuals who are not just comfortable with, but genuinely excited by and actively experimenting with, the power and potential of AI.

What you’ll do:

• Execute flawlessly: Manage the day-to-day patient operations for all active studies - onboarding, reminders, chart reviews, and escalations.
• Be the voice of the patient: Serve as the escalation point for complex patient inquiries, providing empathetic support and amplifying the patient perspective across the organization.
• Direct operational resources: Coordinate with teams, contractors and vendors to ensure we hit our engagement goals.
• Drive data-based improvements: Track key metrics like retention, completeness, and responsiveness, to identify trends and optimize processes.
• Collaborate cross-functionally: Partner with Data Management, Product, and Recruitment teams to ensure a seamless experience for every patient.
• Scale what works: Document best practices and implement process improvements that help us grow our impact across studies
• Manage the long game: Own study-agnostic engagement programs that build lasting patient relationships beyond individual studies

What You’ll Bring:

• A blend of operational excellence and deep empathy with the ability to care deeply about people while maintaining rigorous operational discipline
• 5+ years working in B2C contact centers, with at least 1 - 2 years managing a team
• Experience in clinical research, patient advocacy, or patient recruitment and/or knowledge in healthcare and understanding the challenges that come with navigating rare disease
• Have worked in startups or tech-forward companies, and are comfortable learning new technologies and platforms
• Solves complex problems by finding creative solutions that work for patients and the business
• Collaborates naturally across teams and manages diverse resources toward shared goals
• Ability to communicate with clarity, explaining complex concepts in simple terms
• Understand the numbers and feel comfortable talking analytics
• Familiarity working with Product teams to develop in-house platforms
• Focus on and successful experimentation with integrating AI into your standard practices and workflows, and ideas for new applications here at PicnicHealth. 

We expect all team members to be amazing in their roles and, ultimately, to move the PicnicHealth mission forward.

What is clinical research and why will PicnicHealth win?

Clinical research is the industry responsible for conducting studies to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs and treatments. Better trials lead to faster, more cost-effective drug development, ultimately resulting in more and improved treatments for patients. However, the process remains highly inefficient. Trials are a major bottleneck in drug development, and the promising advancements in biotech cannot translate to real patient impact unless clinical research becomes faster and more efficient

The industry runs on outdated technology and manual processes. Research sites (hospitals, academic centers, doctors' offices) are overburdened and under-resourced. Contract research organizations (CROs), the organizations that traditionally run clinical trials for life sciences companies, typically throw hundreds-of-thousands of man-hours wrangling sites and cobbling together vendor software. 

PicnicHealth has built technology that uniquely positions us to run faster, cheaper, and more flexible studies while removing burden from sites:

• PicnicAI (trained on 350M+ clinician annotations over 100k+ patient records) is the only system that can effectively access and structure all participant EMR data trials need
• Our AI health assistant (NPS of 76 in 2024) guides participants through study activities and enables most to be done at home
• We're an integrated solution — virtual site, CRO, and software platform — with AI built in from the ground up, initially focusing on non-interventional research.  

The other perks & benefits you get when you work at PicnicHealth   

We pay competitive salaries. Everyone on the team is an owner: all full time employees get competitive equity.

Target Base Salary Range: $80K-$100K 

The base salary PicnicHealth offers may vary depending upon the scope, complexity, and autonomy of the position and on the candidate’s job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. 

We’re a remote first company, with teammates spread across the US. We support in-person gatherings, including co-working spaces and multi-day onsites, to build connections and move forward strategic initiatives. Expect to travel 2-4 times a year.  For our team members in the Bay Area, who prefer to work in person we can offer a hybrid set up to work from the SF office on a flexible schedule.

You also get:

• Comprehensive benefits including above market Health, Dental, Vision
• Family friendly environment 
• Flexible time off
• 401k plan
• Free PicnicHealth account
• Equipment and internet funds for home office set up 
• Wellness Stipend

PicnicHealth is committed to promoting an inclusive work environment free of discrimination and harassment. We value a diverse and balanced team where everyone can belong.