Kinsa is looking for an Epidemiologist/Data Scientist with a background in public health surveillance, research methods, and health communication to join our data team. This is an exciting and highly visible role, working with the data science team to develop meaningful illness signals and alerting mechanisms, with our product team to share epidemiology subject matter expertise with health plans and directly to users, and with external collaborators to build Kinsa’s research agenda. The right candidate will have deep technical and statistical skills, as well as experience communicating complex topics and results to both general and scientific audiences.

The ideal candidate will be comfortable working cross-functionally with internal and external stakeholders. You thrive working in a scrappy startup environment and know how to balance competing priorities. Most importantly, you’ll have a genuine passion for Kinsa’s mission, and act as a force multiplier as we continue to grow our organization.

 

Kinsa was founded with a mission to stop infectious illness from spreading by knowing where and when it starts. Our mission has never been more important or more relevant than it is right now. Our real-time map of illness has been featured in the New York Times, on Rachel Maddow, CNBC, FOX News, The Economist, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. We are making headlines bringing our Data to the fight. We’ve done this by successfully transforming the first device you grab when sickness strikes - the thermometer - into a sensor to detect when and where illness is rising, and communicate with those who have just fallen ill.

These are a few examples of projects you will likely tackle in this role:

• Use statistically robust methods to analyze Kinsa and external data to answer research questions to better understand user population, illness trends, and transmission patterns. Communicate results internally (reports, presentations) and externally (conferences, peer-reviewed journals).
• Research and develop illness signals and outbreak detection capabilities using epidemiological methods and principles (ex. applying population weighting techniques to better represent incidence at the population level).
• Collaborate with external partners who are conducting research on Kinsa’s data.
• Write user-facing blog posts to explain public health concepts and empower users to make informed decisions about their health.
• Serve as an infectious disease, statistical, and epidemiological subject matter expert across the organization to ensure accuracy of external communication across verticals.

About you/Core Skills:

• MPH/MS in Epidemiology or Biostatistics or equivalent
• 2+ years of work experience in a setting analyzing population-level health data
• Experience conducting research in academic settings, and disseminating research in peer-reviewed publications
• Experience performing statistical analyses, such as sample size calculations, mixed model regression, and geospatial analysis.
• Strong programming skills in SQL, R and/or Python.
• Exceptional science communicator with written and oral skills, with ability to explain complex concepts to a variety of internal and external stakeholders (academic partners, general public, customers)
• Track record of solving ambiguous problems and thinking under pressure, both individually and in a multifunctional team environment
• Looking for an opportunity to come into a cutting-edge public health company and helping us shape our product offerings.
• Experience adapting to a fast-paced environment, juggling multiple priorities and stakeholders

You might also have:

• Experience deploying code in a production environment
• Experience in health communication, education, or promotion
• Prior work focusing on infectious epidemiology in the public sector, healthcare industry and/or early stage company
• Experience building forecasting models

Be Passionate: The Kinsa team is driven towards a goal that is bigger than themselves, they have a real passion in working toward a solution for a widespread social issue. Our work is stimulating, meaningful and has purpose.

Be Committed: We are committed to our mission. We have a tremendous opportunity in front of us: to change the face of public health and save hundreds of thousands of lives in the process. We are committed to working hard, working smart, working together, and doing what it takes to make a difference. Our time is now.

Be Efficient: We are a startup, and we are proud of our work so far but there is a lot more work to be done. Moving fast is the result of good planning, decision making, and execution.

Be Inclusive: Solving one of the most important public health problems of our time requires a mix of perspectives and approaches, which is why diversity of age, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, physical ability, religious belief and ethnicity are all welcome and greatly valued at Kinsa. We are as proud of our differences as we are of our shared passion for stopping the spread of infectious illness, and are always looking for people with varied viewpoints, skill sets, backgrounds and experiences to realize our mission.