Machine Learning Engineer - Express Scripts Canada

Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company; Mississauga; On-site; CAD 115,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Pension plan

Flexible work options

Job summary

Express Scripts Canada is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer to design, build, and operate data pipelines and ML services that detect unusual patterns in healthcare claims and pharmacies.

You will work with Oracle-based ETL, model development, and API serving, collaborating with business teams to deliver robust, scalable ML solutions. Hybrid work arrangement in Mississauga is offered.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in application development with data science or ML engineering.
• BS in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering or related field.
• Strong Python and ML model deployment experience.

Responsibilities

• Design and build ML data pipelines ingesting features from Oracle.
• Develop unsupervised ML models and evaluate with clustering metrics.
• Serve models via REST APIs with FastAPI and ensure health endpoints.
• orchestrate end-to-end validation from data to API scoring.
• Collaborate with business teams and support CI/CD workflows.

Skills

Python

NumPy

pandas

scikit-learn

ETL

SQL

Oracle

FastAPI

API design

CI/CD

Git

Docker/OpenShift

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/related field

Tools

SQLAlchemy

oracledb

Jenkins/OpenShift

Python tooling

Job description

Job Description Job Title: Machine Learning Engineer Location: Mississauga Employment Type: Full-time Reason for Vacancy: Replacement Work Arrangement: Hybrid Department Name: Application Delivery Department Pay Typed: Salaried Pay Range: $115,000 - $125,000 annually Please note that this is a general posting range and offer range will be varied based on relevant experience, qualifications, skills required and location for this role.

About Us Express Scripts Canada (ESC) is the leader in health benefits management. Serving over 12 million members, we help insurance carriers, third party administrators, and the public sector optimize the value of health benefits by linking the talent and professional expertise of our people with leading edge information management systems and technology. Express Scripts Canada is a wholly owned subsidiary of Express Scripts, one of the largest pharmacy benefit management (PBM) companies in North America, part of The Cigna Group (NYSE: CI), a global health company. Together, we deliver innovative, cost-effective solutions that improve access, affordability, and health outcomes for Canadians.

Job Summary Express Scripts Canada is looking for a Machine Learning Engineer to join our Team. The successful candidate will design, build, and operate data pipelines and ML services that detect unusual patterns in healthcare claims and pharmacies. The role blends hands‑on data engineering (Oracle + ETL), model development (unsupervised learning), and API serving (Python/FastAPI), with close collaboration across business teams. You’ll ensure the best possible performance, quality, and responsiveness of the applications and pipelines, and help maintain code quality, organization, and automation.

Key Responsibilities

• Design & implement ML data pipelines to ingest, engineer, and persist features from Oracle (SQLAlchemy/oracledb), including robust logging, argument‑driven CLI tools, and environment‑based configuration (.env).
• Build and validate unsupervised ML models (e.g., MiniBatchKMeans/KMeans, DBSCAN) with dimensionality reduction (TruncatedSVD/PCA), leveraging chunked processing and sparse matrices for large datasets; evaluate using silhouette/Calinski‑Harabasz/Davies‑Bouldin and stability checks.
• Serve models as REST APIs (ie. FastAPI/Pydantic) with health endpoints, CORS, structured response models, and joblib artifact loading; instrument application logs and operational run scripts.
• Orchestrate end‑to‑end validation (DB → feature engineering → API scoring → curated outputs), writing curated results back to Oracle tables and creating/maintaining schemas and DDL where required.
• Collaborate with business teams to interpret clusters/risk buckets, explain top contributing features, and incorporate feedback loops into subsequent runs and outputs.
• Support deployment workflows in sandboxed/on‑prem environments; participate in CI/CD (e.g., Jenkins/OpenShift pipelines) as part of model operationalization.
• Ensure performance, quality, and responsiveness of data pipelines and APIs; help maintain code quality, organization, and automation; perform code reviews and follow Agile ceremonies.
• Understand how AI is interpreting the data set and use that understanding to build prompt that lead to expected outcomes.
• Develop and maintain AI pipelines including data preprocessing, feature extractions, model training, and evaluation.

What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years application development experience;3–5 years of professional experience in data science / machine learning engineering with Python, including productionizing data pipelines or ML services.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• Core programming (Python): Strong with NumPy, pandas, scikit‑learn, SciPy (sparse), joblib, CLI (argparse), and data visualization (matplotlib/seaborn).
• Modeling (Unsupervised): Practical experience with MiniBatchKMeans/KMeans, DBSCAN, TruncatedSVD/PCA, cluster evaluation (silhouette, CH, DB), and stability/bootstrapping.
• Data engineering and Oracle: Writing performant SQL; using SQLAlchemy and oracledb for reads/writes; creating tables/DDL; batch inserts; column/type normalization.
• ETL pipelines: Feature engineering over large volumes with chunked processing, environment‑aware configs (.env), robust logging, and CSV/DB outputs.
• APIs and integration: Batch prediction flows via REST (e.g., httpx client) and schema‑compatible exports.
• Version control and CI/CD: Proficient with Git; familiarity with Jenkins/OpenShift pipelines and on‑prem deployment constraints.
• Experience in Healthcare domain with exposure to Fraud, Waste, and Abuse detection in pharmacy/claims, risk scoring thresholds, and audit support artifacts considered a strong asset.
• Experience with on‑prem, masked datasets and familiarity with Docker/OpenShift deployment patterns for ML APIs.

Why Join Us

• Competitive compensation, benefits and pension plan
• Career development and advancement opportunities
• A culture that celebrates innovation and collaboration
• Flexible work options and wellness programs

Pre‑Employment Requirements

All offers of employment are conditional upon the successful completion of reference checks and background verification in accordance with company policy. Within ESC, for certain positions, obtaining and maintaining a federal government security clearance is a bona fide occupational requirement. Candidates applying for such roles must meet all eligibility criteria for the applicable clearance level and consent to the security screening process as mandated by federal regulations. Failure to obtain or maintain the required clearance will result in withdrawal of the offer or termination of employment. Our hiring process includes AI‑powered tools to conduct video interviews, take notes and score candidates; however, all scores will be reviewed by hiring managers and our Talent team before making a decision.

Express Scripts Canada is a Cigna company Express Scripts Canada is a subsidiary of Express Scripts, a Cigna company. Cigna Corporation (NYSE: CI) is a global health service company dedicated to improving the health, wellbeing and peace of mind of those we serve. Cigna offers an integrated suite of health services through Cigna, Express Scripts, and our affiliates including medical, dental, behavioural health, pharmacy, vision, supplemental benefits, and other related products.

About Express Scripts Canada Express Scripts Canada is a leading health benefits manager and has been recognized as one of the most innovative. Our clients include Canada's leading insurers, third party administrators and governments. We work with these clients to develop industry‑leading solutions to deliver superior healthcare in a cost‑controlled environment. We provide Active Pharmacy™ services to more than 7 million Canadian patients and adjudicate more than 100 million pharmacy, dental, and extended health claims annually. Through our proprietary consumer intelligence, clinical expertise, and patients‑first approach, we promote better health decisions for plan members, while managing and reducing drug benefit costs for plan sponsors. It will be a condition of employment that the successful candidate obtains an Enhanced Reliability Clearance from the Federal Government. The candidate will be required to provide supporting documentation to receive clearance if required. We offer a competitive salary and benefits package, along with a positive work environment built on solid corporate values, integrity, mutual respect, collaboration, passion, service and alignment.

We are an equal opportunity employer that promotes a diverse, inclusive and accessible workplace. By embracing diversity, we build a more effective organization that empowers our employees to be the best that they can be. We are committed to creating a working environment that is barrier‑free and we are prepared to provide accommodation for people with disabilities.

Doing something meaningful starts with a simple decision, a commitment to changing lives. At The Cigna Group, we’re dedicated to improving the health and vitality of those we serve. Through our divisions Cigna Healthcare and Evernorth Health Services, we are committed to enhancing the lives of our clients, customers and patients. Join us in driving growth and improving lives.