Program Area Director, NORC Health Data Lab

NORC at the University of Chicago • Washington DC, WA

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

NORC seeks a Director of the NORC Health Data Lab (HDL) to provide leadership for the organization’s use of health care administrative data, large-scale linked data assets, and advanced analysis. The Director will set strategic vision and analytic standards, and establish practices that support high-quality, compliant, and innovative analytic work across NORC’s health care evaluation and implementation portfolio. While housed in the Health Care Evaluation research department, the Director will play a role in projects involving use of health care administrative data across the organization, collaborating closely with departments responsible for program implementation and with statisticians and methodologists from NORC’s Research Science division. The Program Area Director will lead the Health Data Lab to support analytic excellence, workforce development and business development for projects using Medicare, Medicaid, commercial claims, encounter data, and other administrative data for health projects. This role offers the opportunity to shape how one of the nation’s leading research organizations uses health care data to support high-impact federal programs. This includes leading innovation projects, mentoring staff, and positioning NORC for continued leadership in data-intensive evaluation and implementation work.

Requirements

• Doctorate or Master’s degree in health services research, economics, public policy, or a related field required.
• At least 12 years of progressive experience working with health care administrative data, including senior technical or program leadership responsibility.
• Demonstrated experience leading data management and analytic infrastructure for CMS or CMS-sponsored implementation and/or evaluation work.
• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and influence multidisciplinary technical teams in complex, matrixed organizational environments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate complex concepts for executives, clients, and non-technical audiences.
• Qualified applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S.
• We regret that we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this position.

Nice To Haves

• Demonstrated proficiency with analytic and data management languages used in health care evaluation and implementation work, including SAS, SQL, Python, and R.
• Direct experience leading data management aspects of CMS implementation and/or evaluation efforts, including leadership of teams performing these functions.
• Firsthand familiarity with CMS and CMS-adjacent data platforms such as the Chronic Conditions Warehouse (CCW), IDR, Model Space, and similar restricted environments.
• Experience transitioning health care data resources and analytic workflows to secure cloud-based environments.
• Experience designing, delivering, and leading training programs and best-practice development related to health care administrative data and analytics.
• Experience applying large language models (LLMs) or other AI-enabled tools to support coding, documentation, or data management tasks, paired with sound judgment related to validation, governance, and appropriate use in federal research settings.
• Demonstrated success in federal business development, including proposal leadership and technical strategy development on large, complex procurements.

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic leadership to guide NORC’s approach to using health care administrative data, including claims, enrollment, encounter, provider, and linked datasets used in federal and state health programs.
• Lead the NORC Health Data Lab as an internal center of excellence supporting analytic standards, best practices, workforce development, and proposal and business development enablement.
• Establish and maintain standards for health care data ingestion, processing, documentation, quality assurance, reproducibility, and analytic workflows across multiple projects.
• Provide senior technical leadership to CMS implementation and evaluation projects, including design and oversight of data management approaches, feasibility assessments, and alignment with platform-specific constraints.
• Lead and mentor teams responsible for health care administrative data management and analytics on large, multi-year federal contracts.
• Oversee development and maintenance of shared analytic resources, including code libraries, analytic templates, reference databases, data dictionaries, and internal technical guidance.
• Collaborate with IT, security, and data governance partners to ensure compliant and efficient use of restricted data environments and secure cloud-based analytic platforms.
• Collaborate with experts across NORC to co-design and oversee training programs, guidance materials, and communities of practice to support analysts, data scientists, and researchers working with health care administrative data.
• Play a senior role in business development, including capture strategy, proposal design, technical narratives, staffing models, and participation in data calls and client discussions.
• Partner with Communications and Business Development teams to strengthen NORC’s external positioning related to health care data, analytics, and innovation.
• Serve as an advisor to organizational leadership on emerging data, cloud, and AI-enabled capabilities as they relate to health data while maintaining appropriate governance and compliance.

Benefits

• Generously subsidized health insurance, effective on the first day of employment
• Dental and vision insurance
• A defined contribution retirement program, along with a separate voluntary 403(b) retirement program
• Group life insurance, long-term and short-term disability insurance
• Benefits that promote work/life balance, including generous paid time off, holidays; paid parental leave, bereavement leave, tuition assistance, and an Employee Assistance Program (EAP).

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior