Senior Director, Data and Science (Data Development) - Verana Health

Verana Health, a digital health company that delivers quality drug lifecycle and medical practice insights from an exclusive real-world data network, recently secured a $150 million Series E led by Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. (JJDC) and Novo Growth, the growth-stage investment arm of Novo Holdings. 

Existing Verana Health investors GV (formerly Google Ventures), Casdin Capital, and Brook Byers also joined the round, as well as notable new investors, including the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, THVC, and Breyer Capital.

We are driven to create quality real-world data in ophthalmology, neurology and urology to accelerate quality insights across the drug lifecycle and within medical practices. Additionally, we are driven to advance the quality of care and quality of life for patients. DRIVE defines our internal purpose and is the galvanizing force that helps ground us in a shared corporate culture. DRIVE is: Diversity, Responsibility, Integrity, Voice-of-Customer and End-Results. Click here to read more about our culture and values.

Our headquarters are located in San Francisco and we have additional offices in Knoxville, TN and New York City with employees working remotely in AZ, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, IL, LA, MA, MN, NC, NJ, NV, NY, OH, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT , VA, WA, Washington, D.C. All employees are required to have permanent residency in one of these states. Candidates who are willing to relocate are also encouraged to apply. 

*Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.*

Job Title: Senior Director, Data and Science

Job Intro:

As Verana Health reinvents how research happens with data and technology in the healthcare space, we are growing our Data Science team to solve complex real-world problems across multiple therapeutic areas, including urology, ophthalmology, and neurology. We are looking for a Senior Director within the Data and Science team to oversee the Data Development group. This team works closely with clinical structured and unstructured text data derived from electronic health records (EHR) as well as imaging data in support of Verana Qdata® development which enables insight generation. Day-to-day activities for this team include algorithm development, data pre- and post-processing, code implementation, modeling, inference, and interpretation.

This role will report directly to the SVP, Data & Science, Quantitative Sciences. Built on the values of continuous learning, cross-functional collaboration, and rigorous scientific research, the Data & Science team strives to improve patient care by innovating at the intersection of real world data, clinical context, and methodology with our partners to ensure all available data is being used to in the most efficient, data-driven way possible.

Job Duties and Responsibilities:

Verana Health is looking for a Senior Director with a background in machine learning, especially on healthcare data, as well as experience managing a technical team.

• Oversee group that is addressing clinical problems by developing and leveraging: 
• natural language processing approaches to analyze and reason over EHR clinical notes
• deep learning techniques to classify and segment clinical images. 
• Establish and maintain best practices for data exploration, end-to-end model development and deployment lifecycle, and data/code/documentation management 
• Work on variable and Qdata development with emphasis on scientific accuracy and explainability to enable commercial projects 
• Collaborate cross-functionally with teams (e.g., Commercial, Product, Medical, Engineering/Technology, etc.) to provide input into data requirements 
• Provide mentorship and knowledge sharing to team members in standardizing machine learning/natural language processing best practices.
• Hands-on people management experience

Basic Requirements:

• Master’s or doctorate in a quantitative discipline (e.g., data science, computer science, machine learning, biostatistics, biomedical informatics, etc.)
• 10+ years of hands-on experience with state-of-the-art natural large language models (e.g., BERT, Longformer, RoBERTa, etc.) in resolving use cases like named entity recognition (NER), text classification, entity relation extraction, etc. 
• 5+ years managing technical teams
• Strong familiarity with programming languages, especially Python, Pyspark, R, SQL
• Strong familiarity with coding platforms, especially Databricks, Amazon Sagemaker, Visual Studio Code
• Familiarity with machine learning approaches for clinical imaging data
• Familiarity with clinical datasets, especially those derived from EHR systems
• Clear communication skills and able to deliver internal/external presentations, particularly to executive teams
• Ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams, including to inform data product roadmap
• Ability to prioritize and manage multiple initiatives with high attention to detail

Benefits:

• We provide 100% health, vision, and dental coverage for employees 
• 401K Match
• Flexible vacation plans 
• $700 learning and wellness annual stipend 
• $25/wk in Doordash credit 
• Headspace meditation app access

Final note:

You do not need to match every listed expectation to apply for this position. Here at Verana, we know that diverse perspectives foster the innovation we need to be successful, and we are committed to building a team that encompasses a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.

Caution to Job Applicants: Be vigilant against potential scams. Verana Health will never ask for payment or personal information upfront. Verify company details, cross-check job offers, and trust your instincts. Any legitimate job offer will be received by a Verana Health email account (not via gmail, text or other means) Report suspicious activities to protect yourself and others in the job-seeking community.

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