Senior Data & AI Engineer, Population Health Analytics

Responsibilities

The Senior Data & AI Engineer will modernize and automate data infrastructure while building AI-enabled capabilities for population health analytics. Responsibilities include developing automated data-quality controls, managing ETL pipelines, and integrating machine learning models to generate clinical and financial insights.

Requirements

Candidates must have at least 5 years of experience in data or analytics engineering with advanced proficiency in SQL Server and T-SQL. Strong expertise in ETL pipelines, Python, and data validation frameworks is required, with a preference for experience in healthcare claims and benefits data.

Skills

• SQL Server
• T-SQL
• ETL
• SSIS
• Data validation
• Python
• Data warehousing
• Power BI
• API development
• Machine learning
• Anomaly detection
• Healthcare analytics
• Data lineage
• Git
• LLM APIs
• Population health

Benefits

• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Life insurance
• Disability coverage
• 401(k)
• Paid time off
• Professional development opportunities

About this role

OVERVIEW

Vital Incite, an Alera Group Company, is searching for a Senior Data & AI Engineer to join their team!
Vital Incite is Alera Group’s population health analytics and consulting division, helping employers and advisors turn complex healthcare data into actionable insights. The team integrates medical, pharmacy, clinical, and other health data to identify cost drivers, improve health outcomes, evaluate program performance, and guide benefits strategy.
About Alera Group
Founded in 2017, Alera Group is one of the nation's leading independent insurance and financial services firms. We combine the strength of a national organization with the personalized service of local experts to help clients succeed across Employee Benefits, Property & Casualty Insurance, Retirement Plan Services, Wealth Services, and Human Capital Solutions.
Why Join Alera Group?
Collaborate with purpose – Work alongside colleagues who believe the best results come from strong partnerships, shared expertise, and supporting one another.
Build your career – Expand your expertise through meaningful work, continuous learning, and opportunities to grow across a national organization.
Make an impact – Help clients navigate complex challenges while contributing to solutions that make a difference for their businesses, employees, and communities.
The Opportunity
The Senior Data & AI Engineer is a key member to help modernize and automate the data infrastructure supporting Vital Incite’s population health analytics platform. This role will initially focus on improving data quality, validation, ETL reliability, and BI readiness across complex healthcare datasets. Over time, the engineer will help build AI-enabled capabilities including anomaly detection, automated report analysis, clinical and financial insight generation, predictive analytics, file mapping, and intelligent workflow automation.
This position will report directly to the Senior VP of Technology at Vital Incite and have a dotted line to Alera Group's Center of Excellence (COE) for AI enablement.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Responsibilities
Build automated data-quality and validation controls across healthcare claims, eligibility, pharmacy, biometric, wellness, and related datasets.
Enhance and support SQL Server, stored procedures, SSIS/ETL pipelines, data transformations, and BI refresh processes.
Develop configurable warning, failure, reconciliation, duplicate, and anomaly-detection rules.
Improve monitoring, logging, exception handling, and root-cause identification across data pipelines.
Automate file ingestion, schema validation, field mapping, and data normalization.
Build reusable data services and APIs to support analytics and future AI applications.
Partner with analysts and clinical teams to automate report review, insight generation, alert discovery, and population-health analytics.
Develop AI-assisted capabilities using LLMs, machine learning, and statistical anomaly detection where appropriate.
Maintain strong security, auditability, data lineage, and controls around PHI and sensitive healthcare data.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required Qualifications
5+ years of data engineering or analytics engineering experience
Advanced SQL Server and T-SQL skills
Strong experience with ETL/data pipelines, ideally SSIS or comparable tools
Experience with stored procedures, performance tuning, query optimization, and large datasets
Experience with data validation, reconciliation, profiling, and quality-control frameworks
Experience with Python for data processing, automation, APIs, or machine learning
BI/data warehouse experience, preferably SSAS, Power BI, or similar
Experience designing monitoring, exception handling, logging, and automated alerts
API and structured-data integration experience, including CSV, Excel, JSON, and flat-file ingestion
Experience with Git/source control and modern software development practices
Preferred Qualifications
AI Experience
The candidate does not need to be an AI research scientist but should understand how to apply AI safely and practically to business and data workflows. Preferred experience includes:
LLM APIs such as OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, or equivalent
Retrieval-augmented generation and structured LLM outputs
Machine learning or statistical anomaly detection
Prompt design and AI workflow orchestration
Evaluation, hallucination controls, traceability, and human review
Building AI capabilities on top of governed enterprise data
The longer-term roadmap includes automated report review, signal discovery, strategy generation, clinical storytelling, prediction, data validation, file mapping, and AI-assisted BI development.
Healthcare / Employee Benefits Experience
Healthcare and employee benefits experience is strongly preferred, including:
Commercial healthcare claims and eligibility data
Medical and pharmacy claims
Member-level population health analytics
Employer-sponsored health plans
Healthcare cost and utilization analytics
Clinical risk stratification
HIPAA, PHI, and healthcare data privacy
Success KPIs
Within the first 6 to 12 months, this person should be able to:
Improve reliability and visibility of the existing data-refresh process
Automate high-value QA and validation controls
Reduce manual data investigation and file-mapping work
Create reusable data-quality and monitoring capabilities
Establish a trusted foundation for AI
Begin delivering production AI use cases from the population-health roadmap
Compensation
Salary Range: $160,000–$170,000 annually
Bonus Eligible: Yes
Benefits
Eligible colleagues enjoy a comprehensive benefits package that includes:
Medical, dental, and vision insurance
Life and disability coverage
401(k)
Generous paid time off
Professional development opportunities

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Work Arrangement
This position is Remote within the US.
We're an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, ...

About Alera Group

Insurance · 501-1,000 employees · headquartered in Tacoma, WA · founded 1923