Staff Research Lead in Epidemiology and Patient Data Products

About Us

Valo Health is a technology company that is integrating human-centric data and AI-powered technology to accelerate the creation of life-changing drugs for more patients faster. Valo was created with the belief that the drug discovery and development process can and should be faster and less expensive, with a much higher probability of success. We are using models early to fail less often, executing clinical trials to add valuation to the company, and generating fit-for-purpose data to feed back into Valo’s Opal Computational Platform™ as we reinvent drug discovery and development from the ground up. Disease doesn’t wait, so neither can we.

We are a multi-disciplinary team of experts in science, technology, and pharmaceuticals united in our mission to achieve better drugs for patients faster. Valo is committed to hiring diverse talent, prioritizing growth and development, fostering an inclusive environment, and creating opportunities to bring together a group of different experiences, backgrounds, and voices to work together. We achieve the widest-ranging impact when we leverage our broad backgrounds and perspectives to accelerate a new frontier in health. Valo seeks to become the catalyst for the pharmaceutical industry and drive the digital transformation of the industry. Are you ready to join us?

About the Role

As a Staff Research Lead in Epidemiology and Patient Data Products, you will be a core member of our innovative team and will contribute to groundbreaking research that is revolutionizing drug discovery. Our innovative platform leverages advanced computational techniques to accelerate the development of new medicines. You will have the opportunity to work with a diverse team of experts (data scientists, epidemiologists, and clinicians) and collaborate on challenging problems that have the potential to make a significant impact on global health. 

What You'll Do...

• This senior role will lead research projects from planning to execution, including real-world data studies (e.g., electronic medical records) for projects in drug discovery and development.

• As a senior member of our team, you will translate research questions into observational study designs, implement project plans, and leverage your medical domain knowledge to create deliverables that showcase patient-centric insights from statistical models to diverse audiences. Examples include interpreting machine learning results into patient profiles.  

• Be a project leader, use agile software tools (e.g., Jira boards) to manage complex projects and timelines on cross-functional matrix teams. Use your technical knowledge and intuition to break down large projects into solvable pieces.

• Collaborate with epidemiology and biology program leads to define project scope, establish timelines, and allocate resources.

• Problem-solve, collaborate, and embed stakeholder and client input into project planning; prioritize tasks that yield maximum impact.

• Be comfortable with scientific uncertainty and embrace curiosity and creative solutions. Many of the challenges we’re trying to address don’t have known solutions or clear processes to arrive at answers. 

• Work with a diverse array of data spanning electronic medical records, sequencing, multi-omics data, and other data modalities using R and Python in cloud environments.

• Be an active team member, championing and adopting shared analytic and coding standards, and providing regular 

What You Bring...

• MPH, MS with 5+ years or PhD in epidemiology or biostatistics with 3+ years of work-related experience applying epidemiological, statistical, and/or machine learning methods to real-world datasets.

• Must have 3+ years of experience leading and executing real world studies. This experience may come from an investigator or lab/researcher manager role for population health/patient data studies.

• Robust statistical analytic skills, applicable to cohort/longitudinal and case control studies of health care databases including electronic health records, administrative claims databases, and/or patient registries. 

• Clear communication and confidence in your ability to use agile software tools (e.g., Jira boards) to implement project plans and manage timelines (e.g., Gantt charts) used by multiple teams.

• Experience leading epidemiologic projects from end-to-end: from translating research questions into observational study designs, contrasting strengths and weaknesses of different study designs and statistical approaches, and generating patient-centric insights from statistical models.  

• Must have experience conducting data manipulation and statistical analysis in Python and/or R programming languages. 

• Experience being an externally facing project leader, leading meetings, and soliciting input from clients, and keeping relevant stakeholders in the loop to ensure alignment throughout project lifecycle.

• Comfortable working in ambiguous problem spaces; experience working in a start-up or agile work environment as part of cross-functional project teams.

Nice to have...

• Experience submitting ethics/IRB approvals, and grant writing and administration are a plus.
• Familiarity with or exposure to traditional drug discovery and development processes and approaches is a plus.
• Familiarity with integrated clinico–omics datasets (including sequencing, genomics, proteomics, etc.) is a plus.
• Advanced knowledge in biostatistics approaches, including inferential and predictive modeling, and comfortable implementing unsupervised machine learning algorithms in real world health care databases.
• Technical project management experience on cross-functional teams is a plus. 

More on Valo

Valo Health, LLC (“Valo”) is a technology company built to transform the drug discovery and development process using human-centric data and artificial intelligence-driven computation. As a digitally native company, Valo aims to fully integrate human-centric data across the entire drug development life cycle into a single unified architecture, thereby accelerating the discovery and development of life-changing drugs while simultaneously reducing costs, time, and failure rates. The company’s Opal Computational Platform™ is an integrated set of capabilities designed to transform data into valuable insights that may accelerate discoveries and enable Valo to advance a robust pipeline of programs across cardiovascular metabolic renal, oncology, and neurodegenerative diseases. Founded by Flagship Pioneering and headquartered in Lexington, MA, Valo also has offices in New York, NY. To learn more, visit www.valohealth.com.