Senior Healthcare Data Engineer

Milliman's Seattle Health Practice is looking for an experienced data professional to join our VRDC analytics team. In this role, you will develop and maintain data pipelines that process healthcare claims and enrollment data; implement measure logic and business rules from CMS and industry specifications; and contribute to the ongoing improvement of our analytic codebases and data products. 

About Our Practice 

Milliman’s Seattle Health Practice partners with a broad spectrum of organizations, including insurance companies, health plans, government agencies, healthcare providers, reinsurers, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), health technology firms, and employers. Our team includes over 180 actuarial professionals, supported by expert consultants, IT specialists, and dedicated operations staff. 

Join Milliman and collaborate with some of the most accomplished professionals in the health industry. Our mentor program ensures you have a dedicated colleague to guide your career growth, providing the support and resources you need to thrive. For motivated candidates, this is an exceptional opportunity to advance professionally while making a meaningful impact in healthcare. 

About the Role and Team 

A significant portion of the work involves Medicare data accessed through the CMS CCW Virtual Research Data Center (VRDC), a secure research environment where individual-level data must be processed in place and can only be exported after aggregation, cell suppression, and CMS review. You will also work outside the VRDC - post-processing exported results, integrating client data and other non-VRDC sources, and developing tools and analytics in standard development environments. Code is maintained outside the VRDC using standard version control practices. 
  
The position reports to a senior manager who leads technical direction for the team. 

The VRDC is a secure virtual desktop environment operated by CMS. All code is managed outside of the VRDC but some individual-level data sources may only be accessed and processed within the VRDC environment. There is no internet access within the environment, data cannot be exported at the individual level, and all outputs are subject to cell suppression rules. Success in this role requires comfort working within these constraints and the resourcefulness to solve problems using available documentation, data dictionaries, and direct inspection of the data. 

Our codebases span multiple languages and platforms and are actively evolving. We value team members who bring informed perspectives on how code should be organized and maintained, while recognizing that pragmatic tradeoffs are part of working in a production analytics environment. 

You will have the opportunity to:  

• Develop and maintain data pipelines that process healthcare claims, enrollment, and related administrative data 
• Own components of data pipelines end-to-end, from raw data processing through final analytic outputs 
• Translate technical specifications and business rules into well-structured, maintainable code 
• Work with large-scale healthcare datasets (tens to hundreds of millions of rows) within the VRDC's secure computing environment 
• Perform data validation, quality checks, and reconciliation to ensure analytic accuracy 
• Identify opportunities to improve code quality, reduce duplication, and strengthen testing, validation, and documentation 
• Ensure reproducibility and traceability of results across data refreshes and measurement years 
• Communicate technical findings, methodology, and data issues clearly to actuarial and consulting staff 
• Manage concurrent workstreams across multiple measurement years and data refresh cycles 

Employees will be expected to develop the ability to manage client relationships and successfully generate new business with both new and existing clients.  

What We’re Looking For 

Required Qualifications 

• 5+ years of professio