Head of US Healthcare Data Science

About this role

Shift delivers AI agents that transform insurers' most critical work. By combining deep industry expertise and unmatched data resources, Shift provides proven results that have earned the trust of hundreds of the world's leading insurers. Our insurance-grade AI is accurate, explainable, and secure—empowering human experts to move with unmatched speed, total confidence, and a renewed focus on the people they serve.

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Our culture is built on innovation, trust, and a drive to transform the insurance industry through our SaaS platform. We come from more than 50 different countries and cultures and together we are creating the future of insurance.

Learn more at www.shift-technology.com

This role leads the strategic expansion of our US Health AI roadmap. You will guide and scale a high-performing group of Data Scientists and Engineers focused on US Health, within our global 200+ person Data Science organization. We are looking for a pragmatic visionary, a leader who views AI not as a feature to patch onto existing software, but as the foundational architecture for the future of healthcare payment integrity. You will be responsible for moving past basic automation into true Agentic AI, balancing rapid, bleeding-edge innovation with the rigorous, explainable guardrails required in healthcare compliance.

What you'll do...

• Define the AI Strategy: Own and execute the technical and strategic roadmap for the US Health payment integrity division, shifting the product line from passive anomaly detection to autonomous, multi-modal AI agents.

• Lead Architectural Innovation: Champion the design and productization of robust data pipelines optimized for LLMs, ensuring the team successfully deploys advanced agentic frameworks (LangChain/LangGraph, OpenAI Agent SDK, MCP, A2A).

• Enforce Responsible AI: Establish and oversee rigorous evaluation frameworks (including LLM-as-a-judge methodologies) to ensure all agentic decisions are completely unbiased, legally sound, secure, and fully explainable to enterprise clients.

• Cultivate a High-Performance Team: Mentor, grow, and empower senior and junior data scientists. Foster a culture of high autonomy, rapid MVP prototyping, and continuous experimentation with next-generation AI stacks.

• Client Advocacy & Executive Bridge: Lead high-impact client workshops, present cutting-edge prototypes, and translate complex technical architectures into clear, value-driven outcomes for healthcare payer executives and C-suite stakeholders.

• Model-Agnostic Governance: Maintain a modular, agile product strategy, ensuring Shift’s infrastructure allows for seamless integration and swapping of underlying capabilities as the market evolves.

What you bring...

• You are an inspiring technical leader with 7+ years of Data Science experience, including a proven track record of leading teams of 7+ members for the past 5+ years with a deep understanding of Healthcare Insurance Payment Integrity / Fraud, Waste, and Abuse (FWA).

• Advanced Generative AI Expertise: Proven hands-on experience designing and scaling production-level Large Language Models (LLMs), RAG systems, and autonomous multi-modal agent workflows.

• Enterprise Technical Leadership: Strong background in object-oriented programming (OOP) and machine learning fundamentals, with a deep understanding of the full ML lifecycle (monitoring, versioning, and deployment).

• Strategic Databricks & ML flow Mastery: Deep familiarity with managing enterprise AI environments utilizing Mosaic AI, Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, and leveraging MLflow for end-to-end experiment tracking and prompt engineering.

• Exceptional Communication: A demonstrated ability to co-create products alongside clients, manage complex stakeholder expectations, and act as a bridge between deep technical execution and commercial business needs.

Highly desired skills...

• Active contributions to open-source agentic frameworks or the broader AI research community.

• Experience navigating complex healthcare compliance landscapes (HIPAA, HITRUST) within cloud-hosted SaaS environments (Azure/Databricks).

The range listed is for base compensation. Your actual base salary will vary based on factors including location and individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process.

In addition to base salary, your total rewards package will include additional components such as incentive pay and benefits. If you're interviewing for this role, speak with your Talent Acquisition Partner to learn more about the specific details for this position.

Base Salary Pay Range $160,000 — $200,000 USD

To support our permanent, full time employees at every stage of their careers and lives, we provide a competitive total rewards and benefits package. Here are the global benefits we’d like to highlight:

• Flexible remote and hybrid working options

• Competitive Salary and a variable component tied to personal and company performance

• Multiple Learning and Development opportunities, including Focus Fridays, a half-day each month to focus on learning and personal growth

• Generous PTO and paid holidays

• Mental health benefits

• 2 MAD Days per year (Make A Difference Days for paid volunteering)

Additional benefits may be offered by country, based on your eligibility - ask your recruiter for more information. Intern and Apprentice positions may receive some of these benefits - ask your recruiter for more details.

AI tools are used to help review applications for this role. Read our AI in Recruitment Notice for what the AI considers, how to request a human review, and our most recent bias audit.

At Shift we strive to be a diverse and inclusive workforce. We welcome applications from and hire people who will contribute to the diversity of our company, without regard to race, color, religion, marital status, age, national or ethnic origin, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy

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