Senior Data Scientist

DrFirst; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401K with match

HSA contribution

PTO 18 days + holidays

Education funds

Job summary

DrFirst is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to join the Provider Solutions data science group. You will lead NLP/LLM initiatives, build production-grade data pipelines, and collaborate with clinicians to ground truth. This role is remote-first and reports to the President of Provider Solutions.

The ideal candidate has a PhD or MS, 5+ years in data science, strong Python/SQL, and experience on AWS with tools like SageMaker, Airflow, dbt. You will mentor peers and present findings to executives.

Qualifications

• Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.
• 5+ years of professional experience in data science, machine learning, and NLP, with a track record of delivering models into production.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Pipeline development and orchestration with tools such as dbt, Airflow, and AWS data services (Glue, DMS, Lambda, S3).
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including production-quality Python, Git workflows, containerization (Docker), and CI/CD.
• Experience productionizing and monitoring models on AWS, including model registry, CI/CD for ML, versioning, and post deployment monitoring (SageMaker, MLflow).
• Experience building and evaluating LLM-powered applications, including prompt design, retrieval, and RAG pipelines.
• Proven ability to scope ambiguous problems and deliver end-to-end solutions with minimal supervision.
• Demonstrated ability to lead projects and mentor data scientists, guiding technical decisions.
• Excellent problem solving and communication skills in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Own AI, ML, and NLP initiatives end to end, from framing through deployment and monitoring.
• Apply LLMs to automate high-volume workflows with latency and throughput considerations.
• Build evaluation datasets and automated eval pipelines for LLM/ML systems; measure quality and error rates.
• Build data foundations behind models, production-grade pipelines and feature datasets from PostgreSQL and Redshift.
• Collaborate with clinicians, pharmacists, and domain experts to ground truth and validate model behavior.
• Ensure HIPAA compliance and monitoring for bias, safety, and performance drift.
• Act as technical lead on projects; set direction and influence technical strategy.
• Coach and mentor data scientists; contribute to hiring and raise the technical bar.
• Communicate analytical findings to executives with clear visuals and reports.

Skills

NLP

LLMs

Python

SQL

Production ML

AWS Cloud

Docker

CI/CD

Data Pipelines

Leadership

Education

Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related quantitative field

Tools

dbt

Airflow

Glue

DMS

Lambda

S3

SageMaker

MLflow

PostgreSQL

Redshift

Job description

About DrFirst

For 25 years, DrFirst has empowered providers and patients to achieve better health through intelligent medication management. We improve healthcare workflows and help patients start and stay on therapy with end-to-end solutions that enhance prescription access, affordability, and adherence. Our solutions help 100 million patients a year and are used by more than 420,000 prescribers, 71,000 pharmacies, 270 EHRs and health information systems, and over 2,000 hospitals in the U.S. This is a great opportunity to be a part of a successful Healthcare IT company experiencing significant growth. Here you’ll get to work with some of the smartest and most interesting people around, solving unique and complex challenges in healthcare on a scale matched by few companies. If you get excited about stretching yourself in new ways, developing yourself to your fullest potential, and care about working with smart colleagues, we want to talk to you!

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly creative problem solver who tackles puzzles for breakfast and scales the solution by dinner. As a Senior Data Scientist you will join a group of data scientists and data analysts to lead and contribute to AI and ML initiatives that push the boundaries of what is possible in healthcare. The team reports directly to the President of the Provider Solutions division, and you should expect to work with and present to executive management often.

This is a senior individual contributor role, not a people management position. The other data scientists do not report to you. You lead through influence by setting technical direction on projects, coaching and raising the bar for your peers, and setting the example on the hardest problems. The ideal candidate brings a strong background in natural language processing (NLP), hands on experience with large language models (LLMs), and fluency with event driven data pipelines. Software engineering experience is a plus because you will work closely with our engineers.

What you will work on

• Own AI, ML, and NLP initiatives end to end, from problem framing through model development, validation, deployment, monitoring, and long term maintenance in production.
• Apply LLMs to automate complex, high volume workflows. Partner with software architects and engineering to deliver solutions that meet strict platform latency and throughput requirements across millions of transactions, balancing accuracy, response time, and inference cost through model selection, caching, and prompt design.
• Define what good looks like. Build evaluation datasets and automated eval pipelines for LLM and ML systems, measure quality and error rates on clinical and financial content, and catch regressions when prompts, models, or data change.
• Build and own the data foundations behind these models, including production grade pipelines and feature datasets sourced from our PostgreSQL transactional systems and Redshift warehouse, with attention to data quality, lineage, and reliability.
• Partner with clinicians, pharmacists, and other domain experts to define ground truth, adjudicate edge cases, and validate that model behavior holds up against real clinical workflows.
• Ensure solutions are accurate, robust, and compliant with healthcare regulations including HIPAA, with appropriate handling of PHI and monitoring for bias, safety, and performance drift.
• Act as the technical lead on projects. Set direction, define approach, establish best practices, and influence technical strategy on complex, high ambiguity problems.
• Coach and mentor data scientists through pairing, design and code reviews, and constructive feedback. Contribute to hiring by interviewing and helping raise the technical bar of the team.
• Communicate complex analytical findings to technical and non-technical audiences, including executive management, through clear presentations, reports, and visualizations.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related quantitative field.
• 5+ years of professional experience in data science, machine learning, and NLP, with a track record of delivering models into production.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Pipeline development and orchestration. Hands on experience building ELT and ETL workflows with tools such as dbt, Airflow, and AWS data services (Glue, DMS, Lambda, S3), with attention to incremental loads, idempotency, data quality testing, and documentation and lineage.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including tested, modular, production quality Python, Git based workflows and code review, containerization (Docker), and CI/CD.
• Experience productionizing and monitoring models on AWS, including model registry, CI/CD for ML, versioning, and post deployment monitoring, with tools such as SageMaker and MLflow.
• Experience building and evaluating LLM powered applications, for example Claude via Amazon Bedrock, including prompt design, retrieval and RAG pipelines, and systematic evaluation of output quality.
• Proven ability to scope ambiguous problems and deliver solutions end to end with minimal supervision.
• Demonstrated ability to lead projects and coach or mentor other data scientists, guiding technical decisions and elevating team output.
• Excellent problem solving and communication skills, and the ability to thrive in a fast paced environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in the healthcare or insurance industry.
• Healthcare data literacy across FHIR, HL7v2, and X12, and clinical vocabularies including RxNorm, NDC, ICD-10, and SNOMED.
• Demonstrated experience designing and maintaining production data pipelines. This includes modeling data for an analytical warehouse (Amazon Redshift or a comparable columnar MPP platform), extracting from transactional systems (PostgreSQL), and writing performant SQL against large tables, including the ability to read a query plan and fix a slow query rather than elevate it.
• Comfortable packaging and deploying work in containers (Docker) and deploying models to cloud managed serving infrastructure such as SageMaker endpoints, ECS, or Lambda. Familiarity with Kubernetes is a plus.

Physical Requirements

• 90% Desk work
• 10% Remote travel to client sites, conferences, or internal team meetings

#LI-GF1 #LI-Remote

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, with a base salary of $140,000 - $170,000 (Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience)
• Eligible for a Discretionary Performance-based bonus
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401K eligible after 3 months of employment, with 50% company match up to first 5% of salary contributed to the plan with a 3-year vesting schedule
• HSA for eligible employees enrolled in the HDHP, with a generous company contribution up to $500 for individual coverage and $1000 for family coverage per year
• 100% company paid short and long-term disability, AD&D, and group life insurance
• Accrued annual paid time off (PTO) of 18 days for the first 3 years of service, increasing thereafter and 7 paid holiday days
• Employee Assistance Program
• Continuing Education funds up to $1500 annually for eligible programs after 1 year of service
• Voluntary benefits including FSA, Hospital indemnity, Accident and Critical Illness insurances

DrFirst is committed to being a Remote-First company, creating a dynamic and flexible workplace where everyone thrives, no matter where they log in from. Check out our approach to remote work: https://drfirst.com/company/about-us/careers/.

Our recruitment process at DrFirst is straightforward and secure. You will only be contacted by our recruitment team through an official @drfirst.com email address. We will never ask you for payment or sensitive personal information, such as your social security number or banking details, at any stage of the hiring process. Additionally, we will not request that you purchase equipment or accept e-checks or checks for deposit. If you encounter any communications claiming to be from DrFirst that seem suspicious, please contact our recruitment team directly at [e-mail] to verify the message’s authenticity. Your security is important to us!

Learn more about our benefits and professional development opportunities: https://drfirst.com/company/about-us/careers/the-perks/.