Senior Research Scientist

surgohealth; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Surgo Health is seeking a Senior Research Scientist to serve as the analytical backbone of the US Youth Mental Health Tracker (YMHT). You will design methods, write rigorous analyses, and help build the systems that enable scalable insights from healthcare data.

You will work with research leadership and domain experts to ensure data quality, measurement validity, and impactful results for a high-profile, multi-year project with major partners.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent with demonstrated research excellence in health analytics.
• Proven ability to design rigorous statistical methods for real-world data.
• Experience leading analyses on large healthcare datasets.

Responsibilities

• Design methods and perform rigorous analyses for YMHT.
• Engineer data-driven tooling to support tracking and reporting.
• Collaborate with leadership and domain experts to deliver insights.

Skills

Advanced analytics

Healthcare data

Data modeling

Statistical analysis

R/Python

SQL

Education

PhD in Biostatistics/Statistics/ML

Tools

R

Python

SQL

SAS

Job description

Surgo Health is building the Behavioral Intelligence layer for healthcare — revealing why people behave as they do, predicting what they will do next, and helping organizations make the decisions that change outcomes.

A Public Benefit Corporation grounded in two decades of global health experience, Surgo generates foundational behavioral data that reveals the unseen why and builds the AI products that powers decision-grade insights at population scale — equipping healthcare organizations, funders, and public agencies to act on what actually shapes health outcomes: people's beliefs, motivations, and barriers.

From predicting who will enroll and remain in a clinical trial, to understanding what drives treatment decisions, to designing more effective health programs, Surgo brings the missing human layer into decisions traditionally made with clinical data alone.

Backed by 40+ peer-reviewed publications and trusted by partners including the Gates Foundation, J&J, Takeda, Pivotal Ventures, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Surgo is building a future where healthcare organizations don't just understand human behavior, but anticipate it — making healthcare more personal, precise, and effective for everyone.

Role Summary

We are looking for a technically strong Senior Research Scientist to serve as the analytical backbone of the high-profile, multi-year US Youth Mental Health Tracker (YMHT). This is a hugely ambitious and impactful project alongside major partners (Pivotal Ventures, MTV) that will change how mental health is monitored and tracked in the US. This role is for someone who wants to go deep on the science and the build, designing methods, writing rigorous analysis, and engineering the systems behind it. You will work alongside our research leadership and domain experts, who own the subject-matter side, so you can focus on getting the data, the measurement, and the tooling right. This is the right role for you if you are passionate about using advanced analytics and healthcare-related data to deliver impactful insights.