Data Engineer (Generative AI & Healthcare Data)

At Altarum, we’re driven by a simple but powerful mission: improving the health of individuals with fewer financial resources and populations underserved by the healthcare system. We partner with federal and state agencies to design and deliver solutions that make a real, measurable difference. 

About The Role

Altarum is building modern data and AI infrastructure to support public health, Medicaid, analytics, evaluation, and interoperability. As a Data Engineer focused on generative AI and healthcare data, you'll independently design, build, deploy, and operate data pipelines, platform services, and production AI applications — with an emphasis on generative AI systems grounded in healthcare data.

This is a mid-level individual contributor role, typically requiring 3–5 years of relevant experience. You'll own defined projects from requirements and technical design through testing, deployment, and production support. Working with principal engineers and project partners, you'll make implementation decisions within shared architecture and security standards, guide small project teams, and help colleagues build data and AI engineering skills.

What You'll Do

Platform Development and Operations

• Design and operate cloud data platform components, including lakehouse storage, compute, SQL and ELT engines, and reusable transformation workflows using Databricks or comparable platforms
• Develop production Python and SQL code, versioned reusable packages, APIs, and configuration-driven frameworks with automated tests and documentation that help other teams adopt them
• Own CI/CD for data pipelines, AI applications, and supporting services, including environment configuration, automated validation, deployment, release verification, and rollback
• Implement infrastructure as code and secure deployment patterns in AWS, AWS GovCloud, Azure, Azure Government, or other approved environments

Data Pipelines and Interoperability

• Own ingestion, transformation, and normalization pipelines for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured healthcare and public health data, including batch and streaming workloads
• Build reusable connectors, data contracts, and curated datasets using Python, SQL, Spark or PySpark, Delta Lake, dbt, or comparable technologies
• Integrate data such as Medicaid and Medicare claims and encounters, FHIR R4, US Core, HL7 v2, social determinants of health, geospatial data, surveys, and qualitative sources as projects require
• Translate analytics, reporting, evaluation, and data science requirements into tested data models and dependable datasets with documented lineage

Data Quality, Reliability, and Cost Management

• Define and implement data quality rules, validation, lineage, metadata, and monitoring for owned pipelines and services
• Diagnose and resolve production failures, data quality issues, and performance bottlenecks; implement root-cause fixes and maintain operational runbooks
• Establish reliability and freshness targets with stakeholders and own monitoring, incident response, and recovery for assigned services
• Optimize compute, storage, partitioning, and pipeline execution; track cost and performance and implement guardrails

AI Application Engineering

• Independently own AI application delivery from requirements and solution design through implementation, evaluation, deployment, and production support, integrating models, data, retrieval, and external services into maintainable applications
• Build retrieval-augmented generation and document-intelligence applications — including ingestion, chunking, embeddings, vector search, and retrieval — to produce source-grounded outputs from healthcare documents and other unstructured data
• Use MLflow or comparable tools to manage generative AI evaluation and tracing, evaluation datasets, custom scorers, and prompt/model versioning; assess output quality, factual accuracy, latency, and cost before and after deployment
• Develop LLM applications and agentic workflows using Python, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or comparable frameworks, with approved services such as Azure OpenAI or Azure AI Foundry
• Deploy and operate AI applications and model endpoints using Databricks Model Serving or comparable services, with governed data access, monitoring, and CI/CD
• Build reusable AI services and automation for healthcare reporting, document extraction, and knowledge retrieval, partnering with data scientists on predictive models when needed

Responsible AI and Security

• Apply privacy by design, encryption, least-privilege access, secrets management, and secure networking; minimize sensitive information in logs, traces, and evaluation datasets
• Implement technical controls and documentation for applicable HIPAA and 42 CFR Part 2 requirements, IRB and data-use agreement restrictions, and responsible AI practices informed by the NIST AI Risk Management Framework
• Work with data science, security, and program teams to document model behavior, evaluate fairness and explainability, and maintain model cards and other governance artifacts

Technical Leadership and Knowledge Sharing

• Serve as technical lead for defined projects or workstreams: break down work, coordinate contributors, review implementation choices, and help resolve blockers alongside principal engineers and project leads
• Mentor colleagues through pairing, code reviews, and technical guidance; lead workshops and create tutorials, runbooks, and examples that help teams adopt reusable data and AI tools
• Explain technical concepts and tradeoffs to varied audiences, and contribute technical materials for proposals and client engagements

What You Bring

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, information systems, engineering, mathematics, statistics, public health informatics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Typically 3–5 years of relevant experience in data engineering, AI engineering, software engineering, analytics engineering, cloud engineering, or applied technical research, including independent delivery of production systems
• Strong Python and SQL skills, with experience building maintainable code, data models, automated tests, and reliable ingestion/transformation pipelines
• Hands-on experience with a cloud platform and a modern data platform such as Databricks or an equivalent, including distributed processing with Spark or comparable technology
• Experience using Git, CI/CD, environment-specific configuration, and automated deployment to deliver and support production workloads
• Hands-on experience building and deploying generative AI applications with LangChain, LlamaIndex, or comparable frameworks, including retrieval-augmented generation or document processing, prompt design, API integration, evaluation, and monitoring
• Ability to turn requirements into technical designs, manage defined work, troubleshoot independently, and guide collaborators through clear explanations and constructive feedback

Preferred Qualifications

• Databricks Certified Generative AI Engineer Associate certification strongly preferred; comparable generative AI credentials with relevant practical experience also valued
• Databricks Mosaic AI, Vector Search, Model Serving, MLflow evaluation and tracing, and Unity Catalog; experience delivering governed generative AI applications
• Healthcare and Medicaid data, quality measures, regulated reporting, FHIR or HL7, or accessible document generation
• Databricks workflows, Asset Bundles, Delta Lake, PySpark, dbt, orchestration, or infrastructure as code
• Experience leading small technical teams, mentoring colleagues or students, teaching technical subjects, or supervising applied research

Why Join Our Team

You'll own data and generative AI engineering work that supports public health and Medicaid programs; building reusable applications and infrastructure while helping colleagues develop practical skills through mentoring, shared tools, and technical education.

Where You'll Work

Remote with occasional in-person collaboration days

If you’re near one of our offices (Silver Spring, MD; or Novi, MI), you’ll be Hybrid and will join us in person one day every other month (6 times per year) for a fun, purpose-driven Collaboration Day. These days are filled with creative energy, meaningful connection, and team brainstorming.

Non-local employees will join these days virtually and may be asked to join us occasionally in-person.

Work Eligibility & Requirements

• Candidates must be currently eligible to work in the United States; sponsorship is not available.
• All work must be performed within the continental U.S. for the duration of employment, unless required by contract.
• Ability to work core hours aligned with Eastern Time, unless otherwise approved by your manager.
• Remote employees must maintain a dedicated, ergonomically appropriate workspace free from distractions, with reliable internet and a mobile device that supports efficient work.
• Travel Requirements: <10%

Altarum is a nonprofit organization focused on improving the health of individuals with fewer financial resources and populations disenfranchised by the health care system.  We work primarily on behalf of federal and state governments to design and implement solutions that achieve measurable results.  We combine our expertise in public health and health care delivery with technology development and implementation, practice transformation, training and technical assistance, quality improvement, data analytics, and applied research and evaluation. Our innovative solutions and proven processes lead to better value and health for all.  

Altarum is an equal opportunity employer that provides employment and opportunities to all qualified employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.