Our healthcare system is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S. Every year, over 50 million Americans suffer adverse financial consequences as a result of seeking care, from lower credit scores to garnished wages. The challenge is only getting worse, as high deductible health plans are the fastest growing plan design in the U.S.

Cedar’s mission is to leverage data science, smart product design and personalization to make healthcare more affordable and accessible. Today, healthcare providers still engage with its consumers in a “one-size-fits-all” approach; and Cedar is excited to leverage consumer best practices to deliver a superior experience.

Background:

Cedar is a patient payment and engagement platform that leverages data science, consumer-centric design and technology to improve the healthcare experience for patients.

The Data Science team plays a critical role in achieving Cedar’s vision. We ensure data and insights are accessible and trusted by all internal and external stakeholders to enable data-driven decision-making. Through analytics, descriptive analyses, and statistical models, we consistently aim to better understand the needs of patients, find improvement opportunities, and impact the product development process. We run experiments to test our various hypotheses and measure our progress. We build ML models and embed them into our web app to deliver a personalized experience to patients. We help differentiate Cedar's product offerings with hard-to-copy competitive advantages.

To do this, we have built an open, supportive, and collaborative team culture. “Love thy teammate” is one of our Data Science values, and we live into this value by operating from a mindset of curiosity, possibility, and the best intentions of each of our team members. As a team, we are dedicated to continually growing our technical excellence and collaborative excellence, equally.

We are also not doing this alone; we partner with the other Makers teams (Product, Engineering, Design, and User Research) to grow our impact. We also work with Commercial teams to evangelize our vision to clients and get market feedback on which pain points are the most urgent to solve.

You can read about some of our work on the Patient Experience Studio, a blog we share with the Design team.

The Role:

Cedar is scaling rapidly and the demand for data and artificial intelligence expertise is increasing. We are seeking a Data Scientist III, Artificial Intelligence to join our team and build features powered by large language models and generative AI technologies. We aim to use AI to drive bill clarity for patients and streamline workflows for our customers, which are large healthcare systems across the US. In this role, you will develop a deep understanding of Cedar’s data and leverage advanced AI tools to utilize this data to drive business value. Combining creativity with rigor, you will build, evaluate, and improve upon AI-powered features that differentiate Cedar’s offerings and help to define the future of our product. 

Responsibilities:

• Develop a deep understanding of Cedar’s data and create curated datasets using a variety of inputs (including audio data, unstructured natural language data, structured data)
• Design and develop AI-powered features to enhance servicing solutions (e.g. chatbots, virtual assistants, automation of workflows) and improve the patient experience (e.g. AI-generated bill explanations, guidance on options to improve bill affordability)
• Define and utilize evaluation frameworks to rigorously test, monitor, and measure the performance of LLMs and other models
• Collaborate closely with stakeholders in engineering and product to productionize AI solutions 
• Research customer workflows and stay up-to-date with advancements in AI technologies to identify new opportunities for applying AI to drive business value
• Present and clearly communicate on your technical approach, methodology, and results to partners across all levels of the organization
• Keep Cedar up-to-date with advances in AI through demos, L&D sessions

Skills and Experience:

• 5+ years of work experience in data/ML/AI (must-have), including 1+ year of experience applying Large Language Models (or significant side projects using LLMs and GenAI technology)
• Deep understanding of best practices in AI, such as effective prompt engineering techniques, chaining, retrieval, vector search, fine-tuning of LLMs 
• Up to date with the latest advancements in generative AI and applying these advancements to ongoing projects
• Experience in processing, annotation, and augmentation of natural language data to create high-quality datasets
• Expertise in both SQL and Python is required
• Has shipped production algorithms to customers and has an understanding of software engineering principles 
• A mindset focused on growth and learning

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. 

Compensation Range and Benefits

• Salary/Hourly Rate Range*: $148,750 - $175,000 
• This role is equity eligible
• This role offers a competitive benefits and wellness package

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What do we offer to the ideal candidate?

• A chance to improve the U.S. healthcare system at a high-growth company! Our leading healthcare financial platform is scaling rapidly, helping millions of patients per year
• Unless stated otherwise, most roles have flexibility to work from home or in the office, depending on what works best for you
• For exempt employees: Unlimited PTO for vacation, sick and mental health days–we encourage everyone to take at least 20 days of PTO per year to ensure dedicated time to spend with loved ones, explore, rest and recharge
• 16 weeks paid parental leave with health benefits for all parents, plus flexible re-entry schedules for returning to work
• Diversity initiatives that encourage Cedarians to bring their whole selves to work, including the Cedarian Advisory Group (a cross-functional cohort focused on increasing internal inclusiveness at Cedar) and three employee resource groups: be@cedar (for BIPOC-identifying Cedarians and their allies), Pridecones (for LGBTQIA+ Cedarians and their allies) and Cedar Women+ (for female-identifying Cedarians) 
• Competitive pay, equity (for qualifying roles) and health benefits that start on the first of the month following your start date (or on your start date if your start date coincides with the first of the month)
• Cedar matches 100% of your 401(k) contributions, up to 3% of your annual compensation
• Access to hands-on mentorship, employee and management coaching, and a team discretionary budget for learning and development resources to help you grow both professionally and personally

About us

Cedar was co-founded by Florian Otto and Arel Lidow in 2016 after a negative medical billing experience inspired them to help improve our healthcare system. With a commitment to solving billing and patient experience issues, Cedar has become a leading healthcare technology company fueled by remarkable growth. Over the past several years, we’ve raised more than $350 million in funding from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global, bringing Cedar’s valuation to $3.2 billion.

As of December 2023, Cedar is engaging with 25 million patients on an annualized basis, and is on target to process $2.6 billion in patient payments annually. Cedar’s ambition is to serve 50-60 million Americans by 2025, about half of the U.S. population that makes medical payments annually. Cedar partners with more than 55 leading healthcare providers and payers including Highmark Inc., Allegheny Health Network, Novant Health, Allina Health and Providence.