Principal Data Scientist

Who we are. . .

Pearl Health is restoring the independence and joy of practicing medicine for doctors in the United States. Our healthcare system has burdened our doctors with too much process, while removing them from what they do best: caring for those we love most. We are a team of physicians and public health experts (Stanford, Dartmouth, Harvard, Mass. General), technologists (athenahealth, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Flatiron, WalMart Health), healthcare innovators (Oscar, Aledade, VillageMD, Stellar, Arcadia) and experienced risk management professionals (CVS/Aetna, Humana, Cigna, United) who believe that primary care providers (PCPs) are the key to the United States’  future health. Pearl recently announced a strategic partnership to proliferate value-based care with Walgreens, one of the largest healthcare companies in the country. Our investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Viking Global Investors, AlleyCorp, and SV Angel. 

Pearl Health helps PCPs who are overwhelmed by the demands of an aging population and the unpredictable business model inherent to Traditional Medicare. Over time, this solution will empower PCPs to provide better care to their entire patient population. We believe there is a need to bring humanism back to healthcare by giving physicians the ability to better allocate their time with patients, increasing their autonomy, creating incentives that are aligned with achieving better outcomes through clinical decision-making powered by actionable intelligence, and making risk more available and more readily optimized through an intelligent marketplace. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) is launching a new value-based care program to disrupt Traditional Medicare, and we believe that this represents an opportunity to achieve the meaningful change we envision.

The role. . .

We are seeking a highly skilled Principal Data Scientist who can perform and advise on technical analyses across the spectrum of research areas engaged by Pearl’s Data Science and Analytics team.  This work ranges from:

• patient risk stratification in order to determine which patients are in most urgent need of care, 
• application of causal analysis to determine the treatment effect of Pearl’s platform, 
• analyses in the vein of health economics to find “hot spots” of inefficient care management across our geographically dispersed and heterogeneous network of PCPs,  
• financial modeling of the economic outcomes of PCPs in a variety of VBC programs, and 
• the development of analytical pipelines and reporting to empower business stakeholders to make informed evidence-based decisions.  

Of course, we are not expecting to do all of these things in a given day or week, but the role will require you to rove among most, if not all, of these areas (and others) over the course of many months or quarters.  

This position will require that you function as an independent implementer of advanced quantitative research, an enabler and reviewer of the work of your colleagues,  an adviser to company leadership about initiatives which leverage data science and analytics,  a thought partner with internal business stakeholders, and a role model of sound quantitative research, for both members of the Data Science and Analytics team and the entire company.  Ideally, you have experience in a startup environment and with healthcare data.  Your willingness to dig into the nuances of different value-based care programs (e.g., ACO REACH, MSSP) and Medicare Advantage will be critical to success.

What Principal Data Scientist means to us…

• Deep expertise in many modern quantitative techniques (e.g., causal inference, deep learning, Bayesian analysis, stochastic simulation).  While no one can have deep knowledge of more than a few advanced techniques, we expect that you can quickly assimilate sufficient knowledge of almost any quantitative method in order to assist a colleague with their research, evaluate the rigor, applicability, or correctness of the research, or to advise leadership on how to develop or acquire the resources needed to leverage the method.  
• Similarly flexibility and adaptability to conduct analyses using a variety of data sources.  This work would include articulating the potential value of new or previously unidentified data sources to our business or research needs.
• Balance the need to carefully study a problem space to produce sound evidence-based conclusions with the need to deliver impact-oriented results in a dynamic business environment.
• Provide strategic direction and thought leadership in the development and execution of data science initiatives and collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify business opportunities and drive data-driven decision making.
• Savor rolling up your sleeves to conduct hands-on data exploration and analysis, but feel equally comfortable impacting work indirectly by offering guidance and support to other team members.  Ideal candidates will be able to articulate the circumstances where “hands on keys” work is more appropriate than engaging with research via thought partnership, mentorship, and advice, and vice versa.
• Support a culture of continuous learning by serving as a subject matter expert in data science, keeping abreast of industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices. 
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including engineers, product managers, and clinicians, to integrate data science solutions into the broader technological ecosystem.
• Ensure compliance with data governance and security standards, maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of healthcare data.
• Ground research in a well-articulated ethical framework that seeks to eliminate bias in our inferences.

Who you are:

• Graduate degree in statistics, applied math, computer science, engineering or a related field and/or 10+ years of experience in performing results-driven quantitative analysis in a collaborative environment.   
• Demonstrated delivery of impactful quantitatively-based initiatives or products, focusing on technical leadership, project management, and collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Experience working with many different types of data sets, including multimodal data.  Ideal candidates will have deep experience in healthcare analytics, particularly in the Medicare value-based care space.
• Hands-on experience spinning up infrastructure related to data science research, including databases, ELT pipelines, MLOps pipelines, and BI tools.  Ideal candidates will also have worked through other technical teams, including software engineering teams, to develop and support this infrastructure.
• Mentorship of junior team members, both on specific technical skills and, more abstractly, research design.
• Experience conducting quantitative research while considering principles and applying best practices of data governance, data security, and research ethics.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to convey complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• SQL expertise and strong foundation in at least one of the main data science programming languages (Python, R, Julia, Scala, Matlab). Python is our current primary language and is preferred.

Our Values

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and our employees are people with different strengths, experiences and backgrounds, who share a passion for improving people’s lives. Our definition of diversity not only includes race and gender identity, but also age, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, religion and many other parts of one’s identity. We believe all of our colleague’s points of view are integral to our success, and that inclusion is everyone’s responsibility and a cause of beautiful things. 

We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and are committed to a fair hiring process free from discrimination and focused around problem solving, improvement, and mutual empowerment. 

Remote Work

We are a remote-first company, with a concentration of team members at our NYC headquarters and in the Boston area.  

Compensation and Benefits

Full time employees are also eligible for annual discretionary bonus. Where a given candidate falls within that range will depend on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, the candidate’s relevant skills, experience and location, labor market conditions and participation, if any, in other compensation arrangements.  Pearl Health provides its employees a competitive benefit package – for more information please review our benefits page. 

Agency Submissions

We are not currently working with contingency search firms. If a resume is submitted to any Pearl Health employee by a third party without a valid written and signed search agreement, it will become the property of Pearl Health and no fee will be paid, irrespective of whether the candidate is hired.  

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