Senior Director, Health Economics & Actuarial Analytics

Foodsmart

1d•$210,000 - $245,000•Remote

About The Position

Foodsmart is seeking a Senior Director of Health Economics & Actuarial Analytics to rigorously validate the company's value proposition of improving member outcomes and saving payers money. This role is responsible for the entire process from measuring clinical improvements (e.g., weight loss, A1c, blood pressure, HEDIS performance) to quantifying their economic value and defending these numbers to clients. The position will also contribute to shaping the value-based care strategy, identifying target populations, and setting performance commitments. The ideal candidate will possess a rigorous, payer-actuarial standard of work, be fluent in both clinical quality measurement and economic value, and be comfortable defending methodologies to technical audiences. This is the most senior data science leadership role, reporting to the VP of Analytics & Data Science. The role involves leading a small team while remaining hands-on with methodology, leveraging AI as a force multiplier, and contributing to peer-reviewed research with academic collaborators. Prior experience within a telehealth or digital health company, or a strong foundation on the payer or consulting side followed by digital health experience, is highly valued. The core requirement is a proven track record of delivering demonstrable value to payers that is credible and believed.

Requirements

A background in health economics, actuarial science, or a closely related quantitative field, with a track record of applying it to healthcare cost and value questions.
Experience proving ROI and value inside a telehealth or digital health company, or a foundation on the payer or consulting side followed by time in digital health.
Hands-on experience measuring clinical outcomes and quality across populations, including familiarity with HEDIS and common chronic condition measures.
Deep, hands-on experience with healthcare claims data, both medical and pharmacy (Rx), including the practical realities of using it for cost and utilization analysis.
Deep expertise in causal inference as applied to healthcare cost and outcomes: matched cohort design, risk adjustment, and quasi-experimental methods.
Direct experience presenting and defending ROI methodology with payers, actuaries, or similarly technical external audiences.
Experience with value-based care arrangements and a point of view on what a provider or vendor can credibly commit to.
Experience partnering with clinical or care delivery teams to translate findings into practice.
Comfort working directly with data (SQL, R, or Python) to conduct your own analysis.
Familiarity with AI-native tooling (Claude Code, or equivalent) as a way to accelerate analysis.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to write for external, technical, and non-technical audiences alike.
Rigorous in the way a payer’s actuarial team is rigorous. You reason about cost, utilization, risk, and credibility with real discipline, and you know where a methodology is most likely to be attacked.
Fluent in both clinical quality measurement and economic value, and comfortable moving between the two. You can look at a change in A1c across a population and know how to turn it into a number a payer will accept.
Comfortable being the technical counterpart to a payer’s own actuaries and consultants: unintimidated by scrutiny, and able to defend methodology choices in real time.
Seasoned. You have proven value to payers repeatedly, and you are not learning ROI methodology on the job.
A systems builder who thinks in terms of scale: a repeatable methodology, not a one-off analysis redone for every new client or payer.
Able to translate technical findings into how care actually gets delivered, working alongside clinical and care delivery teams.
Someone who treats AI as a genuine lever on your own impact. You actively look for ways to use it to work faster and go deeper, and you have a point of view on where it helps and where rigor still demands a human.
Comfortable leading a small team while staying personally hands-on with the hardest analytical work yourself.

Nice To Haves

An advanced degree or actuarial credentials (ASA, FSA, MAAA) are a plus but not required if you have equivalent hands-on depth.
Peer-reviewed publication experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

Own how we measure clinical outcomes across client member populations: weight loss, A1c, blood pressure, food insecurity, HEDIS measures, and the quality metrics our clients hold us to.
Own Foodsmart’s ROI methodology: translating those clinical outcomes into economic value, and identifying which member populations we help the most.
Represent that methodology directly to payers and external actuarial and consulting firms, defending our approach under real technical scrutiny rather than just presenting a final number.
Own the analytical substance of the value story we tell individual clients, grounded in their own members’ outcomes rather than generic benchmarks.
Help shape our value-based care strategy, including which member populations to target and what performance we can credibly stand behind.
Build our outcomes and ROI methodology as a scalable system, one that extends to new populations and new client conversations without being rebuilt from scratch each time.
Partner on peer-reviewed research with academic collaborators.
Work with our clinical team to translate findings and best practices into how care is actually delivered.
Lead and develop a small team while staying hands-on, and lean on AI and other tooling to extend how much ground you and your team can cover.