Sr Data Scientist I

Company Information 

At Advarra, we are passionate about making a difference in the world of clinical research and advancing human health. With a rich history rooted in ethical review services combined with innovative technology solutions and deep industry expertise, we are at the forefront of industry change. A market leader and pioneer, Advarra breaks the silos that impede clinical research, aligning patients, sites, sponsors, and CROs in a connected ecosystem to accelerate trials.  

Company Culture  

Our employees are the heart of Advarra. They are the key to our success and the driving force behind our mission and vision. Our values (Patient-Centric, Ethical, Quality Focused, Collaborative) guide our actions and decisions. Knowing the impact of our work on trial participants and patients, we act with urgency and purpose to advance clinical research so that people can live happier, healthier lives.  

At Advarra, we seek to foster an inclusive and collaborative environment where everyone is treated with respect and diverse perspectives are embraced. Treating one another, our clients, and clinical trial participants with empathy and care are key tenets of our culture at Advarra; we are committed to creating a workplace where each employee is not only valued but empowered to thrive and make a meaningful impact. 

Job Overview Summary 

The AI Data Scientist will focus on optimizing, evaluating, and operationalizing advanced machine learning models within Advarra’s Braid platform—the intelligence layer connecting data, insights, and products across the clinical research ecosystem. This role emphasizes improving and fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) using proprietary datasets to enhance precision, recall, and contextual relevance across clinical and operational data. 

Job Duties & Responsibilities 

• Focus on understanding existing models, assessing their performance, selecting optimal architectures, and fine-tuning them to meet specific domain and business needs—including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) based applications. 

• Collaborate closely with data engineering, product, and domain teams to translate real-world research challenges into scalable, model-driven solutions that accelerate Advarra’s vision of a digitally connected research data and technology fabric. 

• Optimize and fine-tune large language models (LLMs) and domain-specific variants using proprietary datasets to achieve precision and recall targets that drive differentiated customer value. 

• Evaluate model performance across key metrics and benchmarks, identifying strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement across predictive, generative, and retrieval-augmented tasks. 

• Implement and operationalize LLM-based and retrieval-augmented (RAG) systems that enhance Braid-powered products such as Study Design and Site Feasibility. 

• Collaborate with data engineering to ensure scalable, efficient model training, evaluation, and deployment pipelines using Databricks, MLflow, and Delta Lake. 

• Assess and select models—open-source or proprietary—that best align with domain-specific requirements and Advarra’s regulated research environment. 

• Partner with clinical and operational experts to translate research and trial challenges into measurable model evaluation frameworks and optimization strategies. 

• Conduct model interpretability and bias analyses to ensure fairness, transparency, and compliance with governance standards. 

• Document methodologies and validation results to support internal governance, reproducibility, and audit readiness. 

• Contribute to reusable fine-tuning workflows, evaluation frameworks, and model monitoring pipelines within the Braid AI stack. 

• Stay at the forefront of advancements in LLM optimization, retrieval augmentation, and multi-modal learning, applying new methods that improve scalability, explainability, and cost efficiency 

Location  

This role is open to candidates working remotely in the United States. 

Basic Qualifications  

• MS in Machine Learning, Computer Science, or related quantitative discipline, or equivalent relevant work experience. 

• 5+ years of hands-on experience developing and fine-tuning ML or LLM models 

• Demonstrated expertise in Python, with experience and knowledge of a commercial framework like PyTorch. 

• Hands-on experience developing, managing, and troubleshooting workflows within Databricks for data engineering, analytics, and machine learning projects 

• Documented strong understanding of the ML lifecycle 

• Experience with embeddings and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) 

Preferred Qualifications 

• PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related quantitative discipline. 

• Previous experience excelling in a fast-paced, applied research setting where experimentation, iteration, and roadmap alignment are critical. 

• Experience with causal inference, simulation modeling, or graph-based reasoning applied to clinical development or biomedical research. 

• Hands-on fluency in Databricks notebooks for exploratory analysis, model development, and workflow orchestration. 

• Curiosity for how AI training and inference performance impacts both user experience and downstream business value. 

• Mindset of continuous learning, with the ability to bridge experimental work and high-value product applications. 

Physical and Mental Requirements 

• Sit or stand for extended periods of time at stationary workstation 

• Regularly carry, raise, and lower objects of up to 10 Lbs.  

• Learn and comprehend basic instructions 

• Focus and attention to tasks and responsibilities 

• Verbal communication; listening and understanding, responding, and speaking  

Advarra is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and providing a workplace that is free from discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity), national origin, age, disability or genetic information or any other status or characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.  Advarra provides equal employment opportunity to all individuals regardless of these protected characteristics. Further, Advarra takes affirmative action to ensure that applicants and employees are treated without regard to any of these protected characteristics in all terms and conditions of employment, including, but not limited to, hiring, training, promotion, discipline, compensation, benefits, and separation from employment. 

The base salary range for this role is $ 91,524 - $ 167,794. Note that salary may vary based on location, skills, and experience and may vary from the amounts listed above. This position may also be eligible for a variable bonus in addition to base salary as well as health coverage, paid holidays, and other benefits.