Senior Data Scientist

DRFIRST COM INC• US,

8d•$140,000 - $170,000•Remote

About The Position

DrFirst is seeking a creative, experienced Senior Data Scientist to join a team of data scientists and data analysts and lead and contribute to AI and machine learning initiatives in healthcare. This is a senior individual-contributor role, not a people-management position. The role reports within the Provider Solutions division, whose team reports directly to the division President, and involves frequent collaboration with and presentations to executive management. The successful candidate will lead through influence by setting technical direction, coaching peers, and taking on the team’s most challenging problems. The Senior Data Scientist will own AI, ML, and NLP initiatives from problem framing through development, validation, deployment, monitoring, and production maintenance. The role applies LLMs to complex, high-volume workflows and partners with software architects and engineers to meet latency and throughput requirements at scale. It also establishes evaluation datasets and automated pipelines, builds reliable data foundations from transactional and warehouse systems, and works with clinical experts to validate model behavior against real workflows. Solutions must be accurate, robust, and compliant with healthcare regulations, including HIPAA, with appropriate safeguards for PHI and monitoring for bias, safety, and performance drift. The position also provides technical project leadership, mentors data scientists, contributes to hiring, and communicates analytical findings to technical and non-technical audiences. DrFirst describes itself as a Remote-First company. The role includes desk work and remote travel to client sites, conferences, or internal team meetings.

Requirements

Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.
At least 5 years of professional experience in data science, machine learning, and NLP, with a track record of delivering models into production.
Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL.
Hands-on experience building ELT and ETL workflows using tools such as dbt, Airflow, and AWS data services (Glue, DMS, Lambda, and S3), including incremental loads, idempotency, data quality testing, documentation, and lineage.
Strong software engineering fundamentals, including tested, modular, production-quality Python, Git-based workflows and code review, Docker containerization, and CI/CD.
Experience productionizing and monitoring models on AWS, including model registry, CI/CD for ML, versioning, and post-deployment monitoring, using tools such as SageMaker and MLflow.
Experience building and evaluating LLM-powered applications, such as Claude via Amazon Bedrock, including prompt design, retrieval and RAG pipelines, and systematic evaluation of output quality.
Ability to scope ambiguous problems and deliver solutions end to end with minimal supervision.
Demonstrated ability to lead projects and coach or mentor other data scientists, guiding technical decisions and elevating team output.
Excellent problem-solving and communication skills, and ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience in the healthcare or insurance industry.
Healthcare data literacy across FHIR, HL7v2, and X12, and clinical vocabularies including RxNorm, NDC, ICD-10, and SNOMED.
Experience designing and maintaining production data pipelines, modeling data for an analytical warehouse such as Amazon Redshift or a comparable columnar MPP platform, extracting from transactional systems such as PostgreSQL, and writing performant SQL against large tables.
Ability to read a query plan and troubleshoot slow queries.
Experience packaging and deploying work in Docker containers and deploying models to cloud-managed serving infrastructure such as SageMaker endpoints, ECS, or Lambda.
Familiarity with Kubernetes.

Responsibilities

Own AI, ML, and NLP initiatives end to end, from problem framing through model development, validation, deployment, monitoring, and long-term production maintenance.
Apply LLMs to automate complex, high-volume workflows, partnering with software architects and engineers to meet platform latency and throughput requirements across millions of transactions.
Balance model accuracy, response time, and inference cost through model selection, caching, and prompt design.
Build evaluation datasets and automated evaluation pipelines for LLM and ML systems; measure quality and error rates on clinical and financial content and detect regressions when prompts, models, or data change.
Build and own production-grade data pipelines and feature datasets sourced from PostgreSQL transactional systems and the Redshift warehouse, with attention to data quality, lineage, and reliability.
Partner with clinicians, pharmacists, and other domain experts to define ground truth, adjudicate edge cases, and validate model behavior in real clinical workflows.
Ensure solutions are accurate, robust, and compliant with healthcare regulations, including HIPAA; handle PHI appropriately and monitor for bias, safety, and performance drift.
Lead projects technically by setting direction, defining approaches, establishing best practices, and influencing technical strategy for complex, ambiguous problems.
Coach and mentor data scientists through pairing, design and code reviews, and constructive feedback.
Contribute to hiring by interviewing candidates and helping raise the team’s technical bar.
Communicate analytical findings to technical and non-technical audiences, including executive management, through presentations, reports, and visualizations.

Benefits

Competitive compensation with a base salary of $140,000–$170,000; exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience.
Eligibility for a discretionary performance-based bonus.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
401(k) eligibility after 3 months of employment, with a 50% company match on the first 5% of salary contributed and a 3-year vesting schedule.
HSA for eligible employees enrolled in the HDHP, with company contributions up to $500 per year for individual coverage and $1,000 per year for family coverage.
Company-paid short- and long-term disability, AD&D, and group life insurance.
Accrued annual PTO of 18 days during the first 3 years of service, increasing thereafter, and 7 paid holidays.
Employee Assistance Program.
Continuing education funds of up to $1,500 annually for eligible programs after 1 year of service.
Voluntary benefits including FSA, hospital indemnity, accident, and critical illness insurance.