Lead Applied Scientist: Next Best Action AI

Humana; Boise (ID); Remote; USD 129,000 - 178,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision benefits

401(k) retirement savings plan

Paid time off

Bonus incentive plan

Job summary

Humana, Inc. is hiring a Lead Applied Scientist to design, develop, and scale intelligent decision systems powering our Next Best Action platform.

This hands-on leader blends machine learning with decision science and software engineering to own models end-to-end—from prototyping to production monitoring. The role focuses on personalized recommendations, sequential decision making, and policy learning with platforms like PyTorch, Databricks, PySpark, Ray RLlib, and MLflow, while collaborating

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field.
• 6+ years of professional experience in machine learning, applied science, decision science, or related engineering disciplines.
• Strong experience designing, developing, testing, deploying, and monitoring machine learning solutions in production environments.
• Solid understanding of reinforcement learning, sequential decision making, or other advanced decision‑making techniques.
• Strong Python programming skills and experience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Experience with distributed data processing and ML platforms such as Databricks, PySpark, Ray, or equivalent technologies.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including software architecture, code quality, automated testing, and scalable system design.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex business problems into analytical models and production solutions.
• Demonstrated experience owning models across the full lifecycle, including prototyping, offline evaluation, simulation, testing, deployment, and production monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and scale machine learning and reinforcement learning models for personalized recommendations and policy learning.
• Apply decision science, operations research, and simulation techniques to formulate complex decision problems and improve outcomes.
• Develop production ML pipelines using Python, PyTorch, Databricks, PySpark, Ray RLlib, and MLflow for large-scale data processing.
• Design experiments, simulations, and evaluations to assess model effectiveness and business impact.
• Own models and decision policies from prototyping to deployment, ensuring scalable, observable systems.
• Incorporate constraints like clinical eligibility, member preferences, and business rules into intelligent decision systems.
• Provide technical leadership on model architecture, algorithms, evaluation methods, and system design.

Skills

Machine learning

Reinforcement learning

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Databricks

PySpark

Ray RLlib

MLflow

Software engineering

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related quantitative field

Tools

Databricks

PySpark

Ray

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Job description

Humana, Inc. is hiring a Lead Applied Scientist to design, develop, and scale intelligent decision systems powering our Next Best Action platform.

This hands-on leader blends machine learning with decision science and software engineering to own models end-to-end—from prototyping to production monitoring. The role focuses on personalized recommendations, sequential decision making, and policy learning with platforms like PyTorch, Databricks, PySpark, Ray RLlib, and MLflow, while collaborating