Decision Scientist III - Quality and Patient Safety initiative

Classification Title:

Data Scientist III

Classification Minimum Requirements:

A Bachelor’s Degree in data science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and five years of experience; Master’s Degree in data science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and three years of experience; Doctoral Degree in data science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and one year of experience.

Job Description:

The Decision Scientist III supports the Quality and Patient Safety initiative (QPSi) within the UF College of Medicine by applying decision-science approaches to improve patient safety, care quality, and healthcare operations across UF Health and partner institutions. The role focuses on helping teams evaluate clinical and operational decisions by modeling options, constraints, tradeoffs, and expected outcomes.

In collaboration with clinical and technical partners, the incumbent integrates predictive insights, causal estimates, process measures, and operational data into decision-optimization and policy-evaluation work. Core methods include multi-objective optimization, simulation, offline reinforcement learning, and state-space or other sequential decision models.

Successful candidates will bring operations research (or related) training and strong collaboration skills in interdisciplinary settings.

About This Role:

Decision Optimization, Offline Reinforcement Learning, and State-Space Modeling

• Frame clinical and operational questions as decision problems with clear choices, constraints, timelines, and outcomes.
• Develop and evaluate multi-objective optimization approaches (e.g., weighted objectives, constrained formulations, and Pareto-frontier analyses) that balance patient outcomes, quality/value of care metrics, clinician workload, and workflow feasibility (e.g. alert fatigue/sensitivity).
• Use offline reinforcement learning or related policy-evaluation methods when historical data are strong enough to compare decision strategies.
• Build models that represent how patients, care pathways, resources, or bottlenecks change over time.
• Use model outputs, causal estimates, process measures, and operational data from other team members as inputs into decision analyses.
• Test how recommendations change under different assumptions, data limitations, and implementation constraints.
• Produce analyses, documentation, and code that can be reviewed, reused, and extended by the broader QPSi team.

Data Translation and Analytical Integration

• Identify the data needed for decision modeling, including state definitions, actions, outcomes, constraints, and exclusion criteria.
• Work with data engineering, modeling, causal inference, and process-improvement staff to prepare data for optimization and policy evaluation.
• Convert predictions, risk scores, causal estimates, process measures, clinical rules, and operational data into usable model inputs.
• Evaluate whether available data are appropriate for policy comparison, especially when data are missing, actions are sparse, or timing is inconsistent.
• Prototype analyses using Python, SQL, and distributed computing resources when large healthcare datasets require them.

Clinical and Operational Implementation Support

• Work with clinicians, operational leaders, and project teams to ensure recommendations are realistic for the care setting.
• Help define thresholds, safeguards, monitoring measures, and likely failure points for decision-support interventions.
• Compare policy options and identify where additional evidence, workflow redesign, or prospective evaluation may be needed.
• Coordinate with staff leading predictive modeling, causal inference, process mapping, data engineering, and MLOps so optimization work fits into the broader implementation lifecycle.

Communication and Knowledge Dissemination

• Prepare reports, presentations, documentation, and visuals that make optimization results and policy comparisons understandable.
• Explain methods, uncertainty, limitations, and recommended next steps to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Document reusable methods, assumptions, and implementation lessons for QPSi knowledge-sharing.

About the College of Medicine:

The University of Florida's College of Medicine is committed to advancing health through education, research, and patient care. With a focus on innovation and excellence, the college prepares future healthcare leaders through a rigorous curriculum that combines basic sciences with hands-on clinical experience. The College of Medicine emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement, fostering and environment where students, faculty, and staff work together to improve healthcare outcomes. The College is home to cutting-edge research initiatives and state-of-the-art facilities, providing an exceptional training ground for aspiring medical professionals. Dedicated to enhancing health care, the College of Medicine plays an impactful role in shaping the future of medicine. 

For more information about the College of Medicine and its programs, visit College of Medicine. 

We Offer Exceptional Benefits

• Low-cost State Health Plans: Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance 
• Life and Disability Insurance 
• Generous Retirement Options to secure your future
• Comprehensive Paid Time Off Packages with 10+ paid holidays, paid family, sick and vacation leave 
• Exceptional Personal and Professional Development Opportunities: Access to UF Training & Organizational Development programs, leadership development, LinkedIn Learning, and more
• Tuition Assistance through the UF Employee Education Program
• Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Eligible Employer

Learn more about what we have to offer here!

Expected Salary:

$85,000 - $105,000 annually

Required Qualifications:

A Bachelor’s Degree in data science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and five years of experience; Master’s Degree in data science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and three years of experience; Doctoral Degree in data science, statistics, bioinformatics, analytics, or similar field and one year of experience.

Preferred:

The ideal candidate will possess:

• Strong Python skills for data analysis, optimization, simulation, statistical modeling, and reproducible workflows.
• Experience with SQL and relational data sources, especially longitudinal or time-stamped real-world data.
• Demonstrated experience with multi-objective optimization, constrained optimization, operations research, dynamic programming, Bayesian optimization, or closely related methods.
• Experience constructing and interpreting Pareto fronts or Pareto regions, including approaches for robustness, uncertainty, outlier sensitivity, and clinically realistic comparator selection.
• Experience using reinforcement learning or policy-evaluation methods with historical or observational data. Relevant methods may include offline reinforcement learning, off-policy evaluation, contextual bandits, or dynamic treatment regimes.
• Experience modeling systems that evolve over time, such as patient trajectories, workflows, resource use, or sequential care decisions.
• Ability to define objective functions, reward functions, constraints, action spaces, state representations, and evaluation metrics with input from stakeholders.
• Practical judgment about when optimization or reinforcement learning methods are appropriate, and how to evaluate safety, uncertainty, bias, and implementation risk.
• Experience with healthcare data, EHR-derived data, or clinical quality improvement is strongly preferred.
• Experience with large-scale computing environments such as SLURM, Dask, GPU computing, or high-performance computing systems is preferred.
• Familiarity with version control, code review, testing, documentation, and other software engineering practices.
• Able to explain tradeoffs, assumptions, limitations, and uncertainty to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Resourceful, collaborative, and comfortable working independently in ambiguous interdisciplinary project settings.

Special Instructions to Applicants:

In order to be considered, you must upload your cover letter, resume, and contact information for three professional references. 

Application must be submitted by 11:55 p.m. (ET) of the posting end date.

Health Assessment Required:No