American Institutes for Research is looking for a Medicaid Data Programmer II to contribute to applied health services research and policy analysis. You will transform complex Medicaid administrative datasets into high-quality analytic files and research-ready outputs, participating in all aspects of project work.
What You'll Do
- Work with large-scale Medicaid administrative datasets, including eligibility, enrollment, claims, encounters, and provider files.
- Extract, clean, recode, merge, and de-duplicate complex administrative data from multiple sources.
- Convert and integrate data across analytic environments and formats (e.g., STATA, R, Python, SQL-based systems, mainframe extracts, or cloud-based platforms).
- Perform data quality checks, logic checks, and validation analyses to ensure accuracy and completeness of analytic datasets.
- Handle missing data, conduct outlier analyses, and construct derived variables and analytic measures.
- Develop research-ready datasets to support health policy analysis, program evaluation, and reporting.
- Produce tables, figures, and customized analytic outputs for internal and external stakeholders.
- Contribute to statistical analyses under the direction of senior researchers.
- Write and maintain clear documentation for data processing steps, analytic decisions, and code changes.
- Troubleshoot and revise existing code and workflows to improve performance, reproducibility, and accuracy.
- Provide technical guidance or informal mentoring to junior programming staff, as appropriate.
- Contribute to technical sections of reports and proposals.
What We're Looking For
- Undergraduate degree in Statistics, Epidemiology, Economics, Health Informatics, Computer Science, or a related field.
- At least 3 years of experience working directly with Medicaid administrative data, including claims and/or encounter data.
- Strong hands-on experience using one or more programming or analytic languages (e.g., SQL, R, Python, STATA, or similar) to manage and analyze large datasets.
- Demonstrated experience producing analytic datasets, summary tables, and figures for research or policy projects.
- Familiarity with Medicaid data structures, coding systems (e.g., ICD, CPT, HCPCS, NDC), and enrollment or eligibility concepts.
- Strong data management and data processing skills.
Nice to Have
- Experience working with CMS Medicaid and Medicare Research Identifiable Files (RIF) and/or secure data environments (such as the CMS Virtual Research Data Center).
- Experience supporting proposal development or technical write-ups.
Technical Stack
- STATA, R, Python, SQL
- SQL-based systems
- Mainframe extracts
- Cloud-based platforms
Team & Environment
This role reports to AIR's Healthcare Innovations Team.
Work Mode
This is a hybrid position open to candidates near any of AIR's U.S. office locations.
American Institutes for Research is an equal opportunity employer.
