Senior Data Scientist - Medicaid Policy Impact Initiative

Weill Cornell Medical College • New York, NY

3d • $127,500 - $143,000 • Onsite

About The Position

The Medicaid Policy Impact Initiative at Cornell is seeking a Senior Data Scientist with deep experience working with health care claims data to help drive high-impact, policy-relevant research that improves the Medicaid program and strengthens the health care safety net in the United States. This is a high-ownership, hands-on role with the opportunity to shape how large-scale Medicaid data are translated into actionable evidence for policymakers. The Senior Data Scientist will build analytic datasets from raw claims, develop and validate rigorous measures, and generate insights that directly inform state and federal decision-making. In particular, the person in this role will contribute to a public-facing Medicaid Atlas tool that will track variation in Medicaid utilization and spending to support evidence-based policymaking, promote accountability, and catalyze research to improve efficiency in Medicaid.

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience working with health care claims data (Medicaid strongly preferred).
• Strong programming skills (Stata, R, Python, or SAS).
• Experience independently executing analytic projects.
• Experience developing and maintaining scalable infrastructure for research with big data
• Several years of direct experience working with large-scale claims data (e.g., Medicaid or Medicare).
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to manage large, complex datasets.
• Strong communication skills.
• Ability to work independently and lead projects.
• Commitment to reproducibility and high-quality research.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s or PhD in health economics, public policy, biostatistics, data science, or a related quantitative field preferred.

Responsibilities

• Develop algorithms to construct utilization, spending, and quality measures from raw claims data (e.g., the T-MSIS Analytic Files)
• Conduct descriptive and causal analyses to inform Medicaid policy
• Design and maintain scalable workflows for processing national Medicaid claims data
• Improve data quality, documentation, and reproducibility
• Validate measures against external benchmarks (CMS, KFF, state reports)
• Independently manage analytic projects from concept to output
• Contribute to academic papers, policy briefs, and public-facing products

What This Job Offers

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