Lead Applied Scientist: Next Best Action & Decision ML

Humana; Helena (MT); Hybrid; USD 129,000 - 178,000; Full time

Job summary

Humana, Inc. seeks a Lead Applied Scientist to design, develop, and scale intelligent decision systems powering the Next Best Action (NBA) platform.

You will own models end-to-end from prototyping to production deployment and monitoring, delivering personalized recommendations. The role blends machine learning, reinforcement learning, decision science, and software engineering, providing hands-on leadership to guide architecture, experiments, and production readiness while collaborating with

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative field is required.
• 6+ years of experience in machine learning, applied science, or decision science.
• Strong experience designing, deploying, and monitoring ML solutions in production.
• Solid understanding of reinforcement learning and sequential decision making.
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks (PyTorch/TensorFlow).
• Experience with distributed data processing platforms (Databricks, PySpark, Ray).
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and end-to-end model ownership.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and improve ML and RL models for personalized recommendations and sequential decision making.
• Apply decision science and simulation to formulate problems and evaluate alternatives.
• Develop production ML pipelines using Python, PyTorch, Databricks, PySpark, Ray RLlib, and MLflow.
• Design experiments and offline evaluations to assess model effectiveness and business impact.
• Own models and decision policies from prototyping to deployment and monitoring.
• Collaborate with software engineers and data scientists to ensure scalable, observable systems.
• Incorporate clinical eligibility, member preferences, and business rules into decision making.

Skills

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Reinforcement Learning

Production ML

Model lifecycle

Software engineering

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, Operations Research, or a related quantitative field

Tools

Databricks

PySpark

Ray RLlib

MLflow

Job description

Humana, Inc. seeks a Lead Applied Scientist to design, develop, and scale intelligent decision systems powering the Next Best Action (NBA) platform.

You will own models end-to-end from prototyping to production deployment and monitoring, delivering personalized recommendations. The role blends machine learning, reinforcement learning, decision science, and software engineering, providing hands-on leadership to guide architecture, experiments, and production readiness while collaborating with