Sr. AI & Data Scientist

Job Overview

The Sr. AI Scientist combines deep analytical expertise with advanced software engineering skills to architect and deliver high-impact AI/ML solutions on Alignment Health’s proprietary clinical intelligence platform. The role owns complex, ambiguous problems from discovery to production deployment, drives technical excellence across the team, and mentors data scientists while partnering with engineering, product, and clinical leaders to deliver measurable outcomes for Medicare Advantage members.

• Architect end-to-end AI/ML solutions for complex healthcare challenges (35%):
  Design and deliver production-grade machine learning systems for high-stakes applications including risk stratification, clinical decision support, autonomous chart review, and fraud detection. Define technical approach, model selection, and system architecture for multi-model systems and real-time decision engines that process millions of healthcare transactions.
• Own the full ML lifecycle from experimentation to production (25%):
  Build reliable, scalable AI services including experimentation, validation, deployment, monitoring, drift detection, and continuous improvement. Establish instrumentation, observability, alerting, and feedback loops to ensure model performance and reliability in production environments.
• Drive technical excellence and innovation (15%):
  Research and apply state-of-the-art methods in deep learning, NLP/LLMs, computer vision, and causal inference to healthcare problems. Champion engineering best practices including code quality, testing, documentation, reusability, and maintainability across the data science organization.
• Partner strategically with cross-functional leaders (15%):
  Collaborate with Product, Clinical, Operations, and Compliance teams to identify high-value AI opportunities aligned with business strategy. Translate complex technical concepts into clear business narratives for executive audiences and influence product roadmap and technology decisions.
• Provide technical mentorship and raise the bar (10%):
  Guide data scientists through code reviews, architectural discussions, and pair programming. Share knowledge through internal presentations and documentation. Support hiring by conducting technical interviews and modeling best practices in analytical rigor and problem-solving.

• 5-8 years delivering production-grade data science or ML solutions with demonstrated business impact.
• Proven track record architecting complex ML systems from research to production deployment.
• Deep expertise in multiple ML domains and strong software engineering fundamentals.
• Experience leading technical projects and mentoring data scientists.
• Preferred:
  Healthcare domain expertise, particularly Medicare Advantage, risk adjustment, or claims analytics.
• Preferred:
  Experience with production document understanding systems (OCR, NER, entity extraction, LLM pipelines).
• Preferred:
  Published research, open-source contributions, or patents in ML/AI.
• Preferred:
  Training or certification in MLOps, cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP), or healthcare regulations (HIPAA, CMS).

PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or related field (required).

• Expert-level proficiency in Data Science methods, workflows, and best practices.
• Advanced Machine Learning including ensemble methods, deep learning, NLP, LLMs, and computer vision.
• Strong Statistical Analysis and experimental design capabilities.
• Expert programming:
  Python, Java, SQL, or PySpark with emphasis on production-grade, maintainable code.
• Advanced SQL; experience with Databricks (Spark, Delta Lake), MLflow, Unity Catalog, and cloud platforms.
• Experience with Git workflows, CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and modern MLOps practices.
• Deep understanding of healthcare data (claims, clinical, member) and Medicare Advantage operations.
• Experience with No
  
  SQL databases, performance optimization, and distributed computing.
• Real-time ML inference and streaming architectures.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

$ - $

Alignment Health is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, gender identity, or sexual orientation.