Mental Health Expert (South Africa)

About mpathic.ai 

mpathic is keeping humans safe in the AI era through automated tools and expert datasets that are rooted in psychology and powered by clinicians.

We are a series A start-up backed by Tier 1 investors including Foundry.vc and Next Frontier Capital.

About the Role

mpathic is seeking contract, project-based mental health experts who can authentically and accurately represent the experiences, communication styles, and cultural contexts of users from India, Nigeria, South Africa, and/or Brazil.

We are looking for clinicians with experience in:

• Expertise working directly with clients/patients experiencing suicidal ideation or NSSI 
• Inpatient, private practice, or community mental health settings
• Working with diverse populations (e.g., youth, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, people of color)
• Working with individuals and communities from India, Nigeria, South Africa, and/or Brazil, with sufficient cultural familiarity to authentically portray users from one or more of these countries through English-based roleplays

You will collaborate on confidential initiatives focused on AI safety and mental health policy for large language models (LLMs). Responsibilities include roleplaying clinical scenarios with AI agents, red teaming, identifying behavioral edge cases, and supporting accurate identification and response to psychological distress. For this role, ability to develop culturally authentic roleplay is a core component of the work. Experts will be expected to portray users in ways that accurately reflect relevant cultural context, including natural communication patterns, expressions of distress, help-seeking behaviors, and other culturally influenced aspects of mental health experiences.

This role may also involve developing psychometrics, rubrics, behavioral taxonomies, and evaluations, with strict attention to ethics, safety, and current best practices in clinical AI.

What You’ll Be Doing

Responsibilities vary by project and may include:

• Designing and testing AI chat scenarios
• Authentically roleplaying users from India, Nigeria, South Africa, and/or Brazil in conversations with AI systems
• Conducting qualitative conversation analysis
• Developing behavioral taxonomies, personas, and evaluation rubrics
• Providing expert feedback on internal mental health policy
• Collaborating with engineers and researchers on safety metrics
• Documenting edge cases and model failures
• Supporting testing and fine-tuning through structured scenarios
• Maintaining strict confidentiality and QA standards
• Participating in interdisciplinary review sessions

What We're Looking For

Successful candidates are proactive, reliable, communicative, and comfortable balancing independent work with collaboration.

Basic Qualifications

• Licensed mental health clinician (e.g., psychology, counseling, social work, psychiatry, or a related field). Candidates should hold the license, registration, certification, or other professional credential required to practice in their country or jurisdiction. In countries where formal licensure or registration is not required for the candidate’s profession, equivalent education, training, and professional qualifications will be considered with explanation.
• Experience with crisis intervention, risk assessment, and severe psychopathology
• Cultural familiarity with India, Nigeria, South Africa, and/or Brazil sufficient to authentically and accurately roleplay users from that country or cultural background. This may come from currently living or having previously lived in the country; meaningful cultural or ancestral ties combined with direct familiarity with the contemporary cultural context; substantial experience working clinically with clients from that country or cultural context; or other comparable lived or professional experience. Please note all conversations must be conducted only in English. 
• Ability to represent culturally relevant communication patterns and mental health experiences in English-based conversations without relying on stereotypes or broad cultural generalizations
• Familiarity with AI tools and LLMs
• Strong understanding of ethics and confidentiality
• Ability to work remotely and use Slack, LLM tools, and Microsoft Office
• Comfort with ambiguity and feedback-driven work
• Willingness to sign NDAs and work with sensitive content
• Availability up to 5-10hours per week when actively working on a project 

Above and Beyond

• Completed degree and/or licensure
• 5+ years of clinical crisis experience
• Experience working with a variety of severe mental health conditions (e.g., PTSD, BPD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia)
• Youth and young adult clinical experience
• Background in roleplay, theatre, or conversational design
• Trust & safety, content moderation, or behavioral data labeling experience
• Interest in AI, NLP, or ML in clinical settings
• Membership in online communities (e.g., Discord, Reddit)