Sr. AI & Data Scientist

Alignment Health is breaking the mold in conventional health care, committed to serving seniors and those who need it most: the chronically ill and frail. It takes an entire team of passionate and caring people, united in our mission to put the senior first. We have built a team of talented and experienced people who are passionate about transforming the lives of the seniors we serve. In this fast-growing company, you will find ample room for growth and innovation alongside the Alignment Health community. Working at Alignment Health provides an opportunity to do work that really matters, not only changing lives but saving them. Together.

The Sr. AI Scientist combines deep analytical expertise with advanced software engineering skills to architect and deliver high-impact AI/ML solutions on our proprietary clinical intelligence platform. This role owns complex, ambiguous problems from discovery to production deployment, drive technical excellence across the team, and mentor data scientists while partnering with engineering, product, and clinical leaders to deliver measurable outcomes for Medicare Advantage members.

Job Duties/Responsibilities

• Architect end-to-end AI/ML solutions for complex healthcare challenges (35%): Design and deliver production-grade machine learning systems for high-stakes applications including risk stratification, clinical decision support, autonomous chart review, and fraud detection. Define technical approach, model selection, and system architecture for multi-model systems and real-time decision engines that process millions of healthcare transactions.
• Own the full ML lifecycle from experimentation to production (25%): Build reliable, scalable AI services including experimentation, validation, deployment, monitoring, drift detection, and continuous improvement. Establish instrumentation, observability, alerting, and feedback loops to ensure model performance and reliability in production environments.
• Drive technical excellence and innovation (15%): Research and apply state-of-the-art methods in deep learning, NLP/LLMs, computer vision, and causal inference to healthcare problems. Champion engineering best practices including code quality, testing, documentation, reusability, and maintainability across the data science organization.
• Partner strategically with cross-functional leaders (15%): Collaborate with Product, Clinical, Operations, and Compliance teams to identify high-value AI opportunities aligned with business strategy. Translate complex technical concepts into clear business narratives for executive audiences and influence product roadmap and technology decisions.
• Provide technical mentorship and raise the bar (10%): Guide data scientists through code reviews, architectural discussions, and pair programming. Share knowledge through internal presentations and documentation. Support hiring by conducting technical interviews and modeling best practices in analytical rigor and problem-solving.

Job Requirements

Experience

Required:

• 5-8 years delivering production-grade data science or ML solutions with demonstrated business impact
• Proven track record architecting complex ML systems from research to production deployment
• Deep expertise in multiple ML domains and strong software engineering fundamentals
• Experience leading technical projects and mentoring data scientists

Preferred:

• Healthcare domain expertise, particularly Medicare Advantage, risk adjustment, or claims analytics
• Experience with production document understanding systems (OCR, NER, entity extraction, LLM pipelines)
• Published research, open-source contributions, or patents in ML/AI
• Track record of translating research innovations into production systems

Education

Required: PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or related field

Training

Required:
Continuous learning in ML/AI advancements, healthcare analytics, and software engineering practices

Preferred:
Training or certification in MLOps, cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP), or healthcare regulations (HIPAA, CMS)

Specialized Skills

Required:

• Expert-level proficiency in Data Science methods, workflows, and best practices
• Advanced Machine Learning including ensemble methods, deep learning, NLP, LLMs, and computer vision
• Strong Statistical Analysis and experimental design capabilities
• Expert programming: Python, Java, SQL, or PySpark with an emphasis on production-grade, maintainable code.
• Advanced SQL and experience with high-volume, high-dimensional healthcare data
• Proficiency with Databricks (Spark, Delta Lake), MLflow, Unity Catalog, and cloud platforms
• Experience with Git workflows, CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and modern MLOps practices
• Deep understanding of healthcare data (claims, clinical, member) and Medicare Advantage operations
• Exceptional communication skills: ability to translate technical complexity into business value for diverse stakeholders
• Strong data visualization and storytelling capabilities with proven ability to influence technical decisions

Preferred:

• Experience with NoSQL databases, performance optimization, and distributed computing
• Real-time ML inference and streaming architectures
• Contributions to internal ML platforms, frameworks, or open-source projects
• Experience presenting at technical conferences or publishing research

Licensure

Required: None
Preferred: Industry certifications in ML, cloud platforms, or healthcare analytics

Essential Physical Functions

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee regularly is required to stand, walk, sit, use hand to finger, handle or feel objects, tools, or controls; and reach with hands and arms. The employee frequently lifts and/or moves up to 10 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision and the ability to adjust focus.

Pay Range: $172,364.00 - $258,547.00

Pay range may be based on a number of factors including market location, education, responsibilities, experience, etc.

Alignment Health is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

*DISCLAIMER: Please beware of recruitment phishing scams affecting Alignment Health and other employers where individuals receive fraudulent employment-related offers in exchange for money or other sensitive personal information. Please be advised that Alignment Health and its subsidiaries will never ask you for a credit card, send you a check, or ask you for any type of payment as part of consideration for employment with our company. If you feel that you have been the victim of a scam such as this, please report the incident to the Federal Trade Commission at https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/. If you would like to verify the legitimacy of an email sent by or on behalf of Alignment Health’s talent acquisition team, please email [email protected].