Sr. Applied AI Data Scientist - JCHI
The University of California, San Diego
About this position
Position Description
UC San Diego Health is on a journey to build and mature enterprise applied artificial intelligence capabilities that deliver meaningful, measurable impact at scale across the health system. This work reflects a sustained organizational commitment to developing these capabilities as a core part of how care is delivered and supported. The purpose of UCSDH’s applied AI efforts is grounded in the quadruple aim, using AI-enabled technologies to simultaneously expand access to care, improve clinical and operational outcomes, enhance quality and safety, and support a better experience for both patients and care teams. A key focus is leveraging real-time data, predictive, generative, and hybrid models, and increasingly automated interventions to demonstrably achieve impact at scale across the health system. Central to this strategy is the Mission Control vision, which brings together real-time data and applied AI–driven decision support to provide system-wide insight and action across the care continuum, including population health. This initiative serves both as a delivery layer for targeted point solutions across the health system and as a centralized hub for system-level assessment, prediction, and coordinated action. The supporting technology landscape is intentionally dynamic, with an emphasis on identifying best-fit solutions over time while scaling a cohesive enterprise platform that integrates complementary tools and capabilities. This position operates within the Jacobs Center for Health Innovation and is integrated into UC San Diego Health Information Services, sharing leadership, data, and infrastructure, while driving translational innovation and supporting enterprise operations at scale. Position and Team: UC San Diego Health is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to work within the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation (JCHI) on all phases of AI model design and development. The role is responsible for the full model lifecycle, including intake and review, data preparation, model development, evaluation, pre-deployment preparation, deployment, and post-deployment model monitoring and management. This includes applying advanced statistical and machine learning methods, causal inference, and experimental design to ensure models not only predict outcomes but drive measurable impact through real-world interventions. The position operates within a multidisciplinary environment that includes cloud engineers, product managers, AI/automation engineers, application developers, architects, and enterprise platform teams. The Senior Data Scientist owns technical execution across the model lifecycle while partnering closely with product managers who drive product strategy, prioritization, and stakeholder alignment. The position reports to the JCHI Co-Director, who provides functional leadership for data science and AI initiatives and works across JCHI and Information Services stakeholders to align priorities, capabilities, and delivery. This is a senior technical role that requires the ability to independently lead complex data science projects, mentor junior team members, and contribute to the strategic direction of the data science program. The role involves close collaboration with clinical and operational stakeholders to identify high-impact use cases, translate clinical questions into data science problems, and deliver AI solutions that create sustained value across the health system. This includes working across diverse data modalities (e.g., structured EHR data, time-series, imaging, and unstructured text) and leveraging state-of-the-art approaches, including predictive, generative, and hybrid models. What We’re Looking For: The ideal candidate brings deep experience across the full AI model lifecycle in healthcare or complex enterprise environments, with demonstrated ability to independently lead projects from data exploration through production deployment and ongoing monitoring. Experience with healthcare EHR data, particularly Epic, is essential, and candidates should be comfortable working with complex, multimodal clinical datasets to develop models that drive measurable improvements in patient care and health system operations at scale. Experience developing AI models using traditional machine learning, large language models, and hybrid approaches is strongly desired, including familiarity with cloud-based data science platforms such as AWS and modern ML infrastructure. Candidates should be highly proficient in Python, R, SQL, and related tools, with strong expertise in model evaluation, benchmarking, and performance optimization, as well as applying rigorous methods to ensure robustness, generalizability, and real-world impact. Successful candidates will also demonstrate strong familiarity with enterprise health system operations and technologies, including electronic health records, healthcare data integration, and cloud platforms, along with the regulatory and privacy considerations unique to healthcare AI. The role requires the ability to work effectively across clinical, operational, technical, and vendor stakeholders, and to contribute to data science strategy in environments where innovation, scientific rigor, and patient safety must coexist.
Qualifications
Nine (9) years of related experience, education/training, OR a Bachelor’s degree in related area plus five (5) years of related experience/training. Related experience includes data science, computational science, machine learning, AI model development, and work with healthcare EHR data (e.g., Epic). Advanced knowledge of HPC / data science / CI. Highly advanced skills, and demonstrated experience associated with one or more of the following: HPC hardware and software power and performance analysis and research, design, modification, implementation and deployment of HPC or data science or CI applications and tools of large-scale scope. Demonstrated ability to regularly, effectively communicate with unit-level management. Demonstrated ability to initiate research proposals and acquire funding. Demonstrated ability to communicate technical information to technical and non-technical personnel at various levels in the organization and to external research and education audiences. In depth skills and experience in independently resolving complex computing / data / CI problems using introductory and / or intermediate principles. Self-motivated and works independently and as part of a team. Advanced experience working in a complex computing / data / CI environment encompassing all or some of the following: HPC, data science infrastructure and tools / software, and diverse domain science application base. In depth ability to successfully work and / or lead multiple concurrent projects. Demonstrated research and technology project leadership and management skills. In depth experience assessing a broad spectrum of technical and research needs and demands and establish priorities, delegate and / or lead development of solutions to meet such needs. Demonstrated advanced experience in one or more of the following: optimizing, benchmarking, HPC performance and power modeling, analyzing hardware, software, and applications for HPC / data / CI.
Job Location
Towne Centre Drive