Research Data Engineer

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Job Category:

Academic Staff

Regular

Data Engineer I

The Center for Health Disparities Research (CHDR), led by Director Dr. Amy Kind and Deputy Directors Drs. Nicole Rogus-Pulia and Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi, invites applications from highly motivated individuals to join our dynamic, growing, and multidisciplinary team. As a Research Data Engineer with CHDR, you will have the opportunity to contribute to research projects with far-reaching influence, including the largest study of its kind on social determinants of health in the context of Alzheimer's disease.

Broadly, our work is focused on mechanisms of health disparities - the ways fundamental factors such as race, ethnicity, and identity interact with a complex array of geopolitical, socioeconomic, health care, cultural, social, psychological, physiological, genetic, and cellular factors to produce different population health outcomes.

We are seeking a highly motivated individual to join our team and provide expertise on data pipeline management and database engineering within a research environment. This position will work with CHDR scientists and Data Operations peers to optimize current processes related to a relational database used for scholarly research. The Research Data Engineer will join a dynamic team that works on multi-unit projects, both internal and external to UW-Madison.

These projects range from the management of a robust relational database in an Azure cloud platform to produce datasets for distribution among a 24-site consortium, the creation of data visualizations for publications, and working with data analysts and IT professionals in moving forward research in health disparities.

Under the guidance of one of CHDR’s Research Scientists, the successful Research Data Engineer will assist the CHDR scientific team to optimize processes within a large-scale relational database to prepare and analyze data using reproducible pipelines for research purposes. Processing would include data from multiple sources, including geographically-linked metrics of socioeconomic factors and measures of health outcomes, furthering research on and interventions in the social determinants of health.

• This position is full or part-time, 80%-100%.

• This position may require some work to be performed in-person, onsite, at a designated campus work location. Some work may be performed remotely, at an offsite, non-campus work location.

• Excellent organizational skills, strong attention to detail, and the flexibility to work both independently and collaboratively.

• Excellent interpersonal skills related to communicating and documenting steps in the data processing pipeline.

• Develops, constructs, tests, and maintains architectures for large-scale data management and analysis
• Implements data analysis steps in collaboration with data scientists, statisticians, and/or other researchers and may use technologies that support data at scale
• Organizes both data preparation and analysis steps into reproducible pipelines that can process similar data sets automatically
• Selects appropriate technologies and optimizes pipelines for performance
• Prepares data sets for current and future analysis including cleaning/quality assurance, transformations, restructuring, and integration of multiple data sources and may use technologies that support data at scale

School of Medicine and Public Health, Center for Health Disparities Research, Data Analytics Core

The Center for Health Disparities Research (CHDR) is a dynamic multidisciplinary Center housed within the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). Broadly, CHDR focuses on mechanisms of health disparities – with a particular focus on the social exposome and its relationship to health. CHDR is the home to the team that refined and curates the Area Deprivation Index and its data democratization portal, the Neighborhood Atlas®.

CHDR is also…