Company Overview

Policy Reporter offers a suite of insights products and consulting services to enhance market access strategies and patient support initiatives. By tracking payer policies in near real time, we ensure that the largest pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostics manufacturers, leading academic institutions and organized provider groups have the most up-to-date data and evidence-based guidance to help patients access the therapies they need. For more information, please visit https://www.policyreporter.com.

About the Team

The AI team within the Engineering department is dedicated to leveraging data and artificial intelligence to design and deliver reliable, scalable solutions that address critical business needs. We foster a collaborative and supportive team culture, with a strong emphasis on continuous learning and the adoption of modern technologies. Our work involves tackling a diverse set of technical challenges, with a primary focus on extracting structured data from complex healthcare policy documents. We are committed to building high-quality, impactful products that drive value across the organization.

Position Summary

We are seeking a Senior Data Scientist Independent Contractor to join our team and contribute to AI-driven initiatives that enhance internal tools, improve operational efficiency, and drive innovation across the organization. The ideal candidate is self-directed, results-oriented, and thrives in tackling complex problems. They are comfortable navigating ambiguity, asking the right questions, and collaborating effectively within a cross-functional team.

This role focuses on applying AI technologies to analyze complex healthcare policy documents. Responsibilities include designing, evaluating, iteratively improving, and monitoring AI solutions for data extraction and document understanding. The successful candidate will play a key role in shaping intelligent systems that support critical business processes.

Role & Responsibilities

AI Solution Design & Development

• Actively participate in the complete data science lifecycle, from business understanding, problem framing, AI solution design and development, determining the correct evaluation process and success metrics to solution integration and monitoring after launch.
• Keep updated with the latest AI technologies in ML/NLP/LLMs. Apply the right solution to solving our business problems with a critical mind.
• Design and optimize advanced AI solutions/agentic patterns for extracting structured data from diverse payer policy documents, such as coverage policies, formularies, prior authorization criteria, and step edit requirements.
• Design and run rigorous evaluations and error analysis for AI outputs to ensure quality standards and identify improvement opportunities.
• Integrate mature AI solutions to other existing software systems.
• Ensure that launched AI solutions are properly maintained and monitored, and take appropriate action to address any issues related to outdated technologies or degrading quality.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Contribute to projects, adhere to project timelines and deliver solutions on time.
• Work closely with other engineers, product team and subject matter experts (SMEs) to understand the business need and frame the problem properly.
• Work closely with SMEs on data gathering, data labeling, prompt design, error analysis.
• Able to communicate clearly and professionally in both technical and non-technical settings and translate requirements and guidance to-and-from both technical and non-technical teams.

Mentorship & Support

• Educate peers about latest AI technologies, such as LLMs, Agentic patterns, prompt techniques, etc
• Establish and document data science best practices especially around LLM usage and evaluation methodologies.

Skills & Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science/data science.
• 5+ years in machine learning/natural language processing, with 3+ years in designing and developing LLM-based AI solutions.
• Strong programming skills in Python, SQL.
• Proven expertise in working with LLMs (such as GPT, Gemini, Claude, Llama, etc) for document analysis and data extraction tasks. Knowledge in common LLM agentic design patterns.
• Proven experience in modern ML tools, such as LLM APIs, TensorFlow/PyTorch, HuggingFace, LangChain, MLFlow, etc.
• Understand the behaviors, strengths and limitations of different LLMs, and ways to tackle the challenges.
• Familiar with common prompt techniques and common LLM patterns such as RAG.
• Excellent debugging, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Database experience to gather data from database such as PostgreSQL.
• Experience communicating directly with customers to synthesize their requirements and align it with business goals.
• Experience of leading a team or projects to raise the quality of the team/organization.

Nice to have:

• Knowledge in healthcare insurance policy documents.
• Knowledge of healthcare data standards and regulations affecting our AI applications.
• Experience working with cloud technology stack (e.g. AWS).
• Knows how to structure applications for long term maintenance and ongoing flexibility.
• Knows object-oriented design and programming.
• Experience in system architecture design.

Policy Reporter's Core Values

• Excellence
• Value & Respect
• Continuous Learning
• Ownership & Accountability
• Teamwork

Policy Reporter is committed to Employment Equity. Accommodations during the recruitment process are available upon request for candidates with disabilities.