Lead Applied Scientist, Next Best Action (NBA) — Remote

Humana, Inc.; Topeka (KS); Hybrid; USD 129,000 - 178,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus incentive plan

Medical, dental & vision benefits

Job summary

Humana, Inc. in the United States seeks a Lead Applied Scientist to design, develop, and scale intelligent decision systems powering our Next Best Action platform. You will own end-to-end models and decision policies, from prototyping through production deployment and monitoring.

This hands-on technical leadership role blends machine learning, decision science, and software engineering, with collaboration across data scientists, engineers, and business stakeholders in a remote/hybrid setup.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, Operations Research, or related field.
• 6+ years of professional experience in machine learning, applied science, or decision science.
• Experience designing, deploying, and monitoring ML solutions in production.
• Solid understanding of reinforcement learning and sequential decision making.
• Strong Python programming skills with PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Experience with distributed data processing using Databricks, PySpark, Ray, or similar.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and improve ML and RL models for personalized recommendations and policy learning.
• Apply decision science and simulation to formulate complex decision problems under constraints.
• Build production ML pipelines and scalable data processing systems.
• Design experiments and evaluations to assess model performance and business impact.
• Own the full lifecycle of models and decision policies from prototyping to monitoring.
• Collaborate with software engineers and data scientists to ensure reliable production systems.

Skills

Machine learning

Reinforcement learning

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Databricks

PySpark

Ray RLlib

MLflow

System design

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Databricks

PySpark

Ray

MLflow

Job description

Humana, Inc. in the United States seeks a Lead Applied Scientist to design, develop, and scale intelligent decision systems powering our Next Best Action platform. You will own end-to-end models and decision policies, from prototyping through production deployment and monitoring.

This hands-on technical leadership role blends machine learning, decision science, and software engineering, with collaboration across data scientists, engineers, and business stakeholders in a remote/hybrid setup.