AI Data Scientist Team Lead

Location: Work from home (Pennsylvania) Shift: Days (United States of America) Scheduled Weekly Hours: 40 Worker Type: Regular Exemption Status: Yes Job Summary: The AI Data Scientist Team Lead (Manager, AI Platform Engineering) architects end-to-end AI solutions and leads the AI Platform team for Geisinger's AI Department. This is a hands-on technical leadership role, splitting time equally between solution architecture and engineering management (50% technical / 50% leadership). On the technical side, the Team Lead serves as the solution architect across the AI Platform portfolio: gathering requirements from clinical informaticists, data scientists, and business stakeholders; designing production-grade AI architectures spanning batch and real-time workloads; and making build-vs-buy calls for emerging AI capabilities. On the management side, the Team Lead runs the team's rituals, removes blockers, develops direct reports, and manages stakeholder expectations. The AI Platform team is an enabling team—not a delivery team—that builds the reusable capabilities, tooling, and infrastructure that let product teams deploy AI safely and quickly. The team consists of 8 engineers supporting 10 platform capabilities across 70 AI programs. The Team Lead owns the team's capability roadmap, capacity allocation, platform engineering standards, and architecture reviews, while translating organizational AI strategy into executable technical plans that deliver production-grade capabilities across the portfolio. Job Duties: What You Will Own: Solution architecture across all platform capabilities (agentic AI systems, RAG pipelines, multi-model orchestration, real-time and batch ML infrastructure) Requirements gathering and technical specification for AI programs across clinical and operational domains Build-vs-buy and technology selection decisions for emerging AI capabilities, including generative AI, foundation models, and LLM applications Platform engineering standards, architecture reviews, and governance compliance (HIPAA, AI risk management, responsible AI principles) Team roadmap, capacity allocation, and intake triage for platform support requests People management, career development, and performance evaluation for 4 direct reports (3 MLOps Engineers, 1 Full Stack Engineer) Work direction, priorities, platform standards, and formal performance input for 3 matrixed engineers from partner departments (Sr. Platform Data Engineer, Sr. Software Engineer for Integration & Interfaces, Sr. Platform Engineer) What You Will Not Own: Individual capability delivery (delegated to the team via RACI) Product strategy or portfolio prioritization (owned by the AI Product Management function) Discipline-specific technical standards (set department-wide by the MLOps and Data Science Technical Discipline Leads; set by home-department tech leads for matrixed engineers) HR management or final performance evaluations for matrixed engineers (owned by their home departments) Day-to-day Databricks workspace administration (owned by the Sr. Platform Data Engineer) Solution Architecture Responsibilities (50% Technical): Design scalable AI architectures spanning batch and real-time workloads, ensuring solutions are production-grade, maintainable, and aligned with organizational priorities Gather and refine requirements from clinical informaticists, data scientists, and business stakeholders; translate complex needs into actionable technical specifications Architect agentic AI systems, RAG pipelines, and multi-model orchestration frameworks across clinical and operational domains Serve as technical authority on end-to-end AI pipeline design across Databricks, cloud-native platforms, and Epic integration points Drive build-vs-buy and technology selection decisions for emerging AI capabilities (generative AI, foundation models, LLM applications) Ensure AI systems adhere to healthcare security standards (HIPAA), AI governance frameworks, and responsible AI principles Partner with data architects and governance teams to enforce data quality, lineage, and access controls across AI data assets Engineering Management Responsibilities (50% Leadership): Lead multiple concurrent AI projects; manage scope, timelines, and technical risk while removing obstacles for the team Mentor and develop 4 direct-report engineers; provide technical leadership and formal performance input for 3 matrixed engineers Establish platform engineering best practices, conduct architecture reviews, and foster engineering excellence across the full team Align technical execution with strategic goals; contribute data-driven insights to inform organizational AI initiatives Coordinate cross-functional collaboration between the AI Platform team and data scientists, software engineers, clinical informaticists, and business stakeholders Champion scalable and governed AI practices across the organization Run team rituals (daily standups, weekly planning, architecture office hours, biweekly demos, monthly capability health reviews, quarterly roadmap refresh) How the Role Operates: Prioritization: The Team Lead owns the team's roadmap, balancing strategic alignment (capabilities that unblock the highest-value portfolio initiatives), breadth of impact (work that benefits the most programs wins over single-program requests), and operational urgency (production incidents, security issues, governance blockers jump the queue) Intake: Product teams request platform support through a lightweight intake process the Team Lead manages; requests are triaged weekly—absorbed into the roadmap, handled as quick-turn asks, or redirected to self-serve documentation Matrix management: For direct reports, owns the full management stack (roadmap, career development, performance, HR). For matrixed engineers, owns the work (roadmap, priorities, platform standards, architecture reviews) and provides formal input on performance reviews; the engineer's home department owns HR management and final evaluation Escalation path: Engineer-level issues resolved directly between engineers; priority conflicts, scope disagreements, and technical decisions with broad impact come to the Team Lead; strategic trade-offs and cross-department conflicts escalate to the VP Work is typically performed in an office or remote environment. Accountable for satisfying all job specific obligations and complying with all organization policies and procedures. The specific statements in this profile are not intended to be all-inclusive. They represent typical elements considered necessary to successfully perform the job. (Required) Certification(s) and License(s): Skills: Analyzing, processing and building AI/ML solutions from Clinical and Operational data sources, such as Epic Clarity, HL7, DICOM, or ECG data, Clinical Databases, Communication, Critical Thinking, Data Analysis, Data Presentations, Group Collaboration, Leadership, Machine Learning Methods, Programming Languages, Structured Query Language (SQL) OUR PURPOSE & VALUES: Everything we do is about caring for our patients, our members, our students, our Geisinger family and our communities. KINDNESS: We strive to treat everyone as we would hope to be treated ourselves. EXCELLENCE: We treasure colleagues who humbly strive for excellence. LEARNING: We share our knowledge with the best and brightest to better prepare the caregivers for tomorrow. INNOVATION: We constantly seek new and better ways to care for our patients, our members, our community, and the nation. SAFETY: We provide a safe environment for our patients and members and the Geisinger family. We offer healthcare benefits for full time and part time positions from day one, including vision, dental and domestic partners. Perhaps just as important, we encourage an atmosphere of collaboration, cooperation and collegiality. We know that a diverse workforce with unique experiences and backgrounds makes our team stronger. Our patients, members and community come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and it takes a diverse workforce to make better health easier for all. We are proud to be an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment regardless to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or status as a protected veteran. Geisinger is committed to making better health easier for the more than 1 million people it serves. Founded more than 100 years ago by Abigail Geisinger, the system now includes nine hospital campuses, a 550,000-member health plan, two research centers and the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine. With nearly 24,000 employees and more than 1,600 employed physicians, Geisinger boosts its hometown economies in Pennsylvania by billions of dollars annually. We offer healthcare benefits for full time and part time positions from day one, including vision, dental and benefits for domestic partners. Perhaps just as important, we encourage an atmosphere of collaboration, cooperation and collegiality. For more information, visit www.geisinger.org, or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. * Does not qualify for J-1 waiver. We are an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and Minorities are Encouraged to Apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability or their protected veteran status.