Senior Data Scientist, Operations Research (Care Operations)

Carrum Health•,

2h•$175,000 - $200,000•Remote

About The Position

Carrum Health is seeking a Senior Data Scientist with an operations research or industrial and systems engineering mindset to improve its care navigation operation. The role will redesign workflows, evaluate changes rigorously, and monitor their effects. The care navigation team supports members from initial contact through treatment and recovery across a 10-step process involving care navigators, patient access coordinators, and nurses. The position is part of the Data team and works day-to-day with care operations leadership as a thought partner, presenting options and recommendations. The Senior Data Scientist will analyze event data to understand time and capacity across the operation, model capacity against demand, develop and assess workflow and care model changes, measure performance fairly, and optimize routing and work allocation within capacity, skill, and licensing constraints. As the operation matures, the work may expand to prioritization and stopping policies. Carrum Health is remote-first, with occasional travel possible for team offsites, client events, or company gatherings. Chicago and San Francisco offices are available as options. The stated salary range is $175,000–$200,000 depending on geography and experience, plus equity and an annual bonus.

Requirements

Experience redesigning a real operation, such as a workflow, queue structure, or staffing model, with adoption by a frontline team and a measured result.
Experience mapping a multi-step, multi-workforce process from event data; identifying time and capacity losses; dividing work across teams; and sizing capacity to demand.
Experience framing an operational problem as an assignment, routing, or allocation problem and shipping a solution used by people, using an optimization library or solver such as OR-Tools, Gurobi, or PuLP.
Ability to choose an appropriate heuristic when it is preferable to an exact solver.
Experience designing tests of operational changes with success measures agreed in advance and monitoring changes after launch.
Ability to estimate causal effects from observational data when randomization is not possible, and distinguish association from effect.
Experience developing performance and outcome measures that separate workload from skill.
Experience using survival and hazard models on censored data.
Strong analytical rigor, including identifying potential confounders in findings and validating AI-assisted work.
Production-quality Python and SQL skills.
Ability to translate operational problems into well-posed analytical problems and communicate actionable results to frontline teams, including when stakeholders push back.
Understanding of minimum-necessary access to sensitive healthcare data.

Nice To Haves

Background in industrial or systems engineering, operations research, healthcare operations, or data science.
Experience running an operational experiment that changed a decision.
Experience with sequential decision-making, such as bandits or optimal stopping.
Experience with simulation, workforce scheduling, or process mining.
Healthcare operations experience, such as hospital patient flow or capacity management.

Responsibilities

Analyze event data to understand how time and capacity are used across a multi-step, multi-workforce care process.
Redesign workflow and work division, including queue design, triage, staffing, and other structural changes.
Build queueing-based capacity models to support staffing plans and operational trade-offs.
Design evaluations for care model and workflow changes, define success measures, use causal inference when experimentation is not possible, and monitor changes after launch.
Develop performance measures that distinguish workload from skill and are trusted by the team.
Formulate and implement routing and work allocation solutions that respect capacity, skill, and licensing constraints.
As the operation matures, develop prioritization and stopping policies for regular operational use.
Partner with care operations leadership by translating operational challenges into well-posed problems and results into practical recommendations for frontline teams.
Produce production-quality Python and SQL tools and analyses.
Validate AI-assisted work and handle sensitive healthcare data in accordance with minimum-necessary access principles.

Benefits

Stock option plan and performance bonus for eligible employees.
Flexible schedules and remote work.
Flexible PTO, within reason.
Summer Fridays, with sign-off at 1 p.m. local time.
15+ paid holidays, including Juneteenth, World Mental Health Day, and Carrum Health Day.
Annual holiday shutdown in December.
Paid parental leave.
Health, vision, and dental insurance.
Employee Assistance Programs (EAP).
401K retirement plan.
Opportunities to connect virtually and in person.
Chicago and San Francisco offices available as an option.