Founding Data Engineer

Company Description

About Patient Funding Alternatives (PFA)
At Patient Funding Alternatives (PFA), we remove the barriers that keep Medicaid-eligible and medically underserved individuals from getting the care they deserve. We partner with hospitals and health systems across the country to help patients secure coverage through employer-sponsored insurance — simplifying the process, protecting patients, and strengthening hospital outcomes.

As the only organization in the U.S. offering a full Premium Assistance Enrollment service supported by dedicated Patient Advocates within partner hospitals, we make access to coverage easier, faster, and more compassionate.

PFA is growing rapidly nationwide, and our success is built on people who care deeply about helping others. We believe our employees are our most valuable resource, and we’re committed to maintaining a healthy work/life balance within a culture grounded in empathy, teamwork, and respect.

If you’re passionate about guiding patients through complex healthcare systems, advocating for fairness, and making a measurable impact every day — PFA is where you belong.

Job Description

The Opportunity

We are building PFA’s data organization from the ground up. This is the first dedicated data hire and an opportunity to shape the architecture, standards, tooling, and analytical capabilities that will support the company for years to come. Every model you build and every pipeline you improve helps eligible families obtain healthcare coverage they otherwise might not receive.

You’ll help build the intelligence platform behind Enable 2.0 by transforming fragmented healthcare data into predictive insights, AI-enabled workflows, and decision support systems that improve how patients access coverage and how hospitals operate. This is an opportunity to build a core strategic capability, not just maintain data pipelines.

As PFA grows, this role has significant opportunity to evolve into technical leadership for our expanding data organization.

What You’ll Do

Data Platform & Engineering

• Own PFA’s data platform, analytical infrastructure, and data engineering architecture
• Help redesign and build the next-generation data architecture supporting Enable 2.0, including ingestion pipelines, APIs, analytical models, and cloud-native services
• Build and maintain integrations for external data injections from hospital and healthcare data partners
• Design and implement durable data cleaning and quality processes for immature, fragmented healthcare data — build repeatable pipelines, not one-off fixes
• Design database schemas and data models that support both operational and analytical workloads

Analytics & AI

• Work alongside our product and engineering teams to develop AI-driven capabilities including predictive modeling, intelligent workflow prioritization, and operational decision support
• Derive actionable insights from complex hospital datasets and communicate findings clearly to non-technical leaders
• Build reporting layers and dashboards using Power BI or similar BI tools
• Develop analyses and models that inform decisions at the executive level

Software Engineering Practices

• Write clean, well-documented, production-grade Python and SQL
• Apply sound software design principles to data systems — modularity, maintainability, and scalability
• Use version control (Git) and participate in code reviews as standard practice
• Build automated testing into pipelines and data systems to ensure reliability

Ownership & Stakeholder Partnership

• Serve as PFA’s internal owner and subject matter expert for the data platform — the person leadership turns to for data decisions
• Translate business questions from the CTO and operational leaders into well-scoped technical problems; communicate findings back in plain language
• Proactively identify where data quality, coverage, or tooling gaps are limiting the business — and own the path to fixing them
• Establish data best practices and standards as PFA’s data organization grows

Qualifications

Required

• Senior-level experience building production data systems and analytical solutions
• Expert-level Python — pipeline development, data manipulation, modeling, and backend engineering
• Strong SQL proficiency — complex queries, performance optimization, and database design
• Proven track record working with messy, immature, or incomplete datasets — data cleaning and governance is part of the job, not a stepping stone to it
• Experience integrating external data from third-party sources, APIs, or partner systems into a central data environment
• Solid software engineering fundamentals: version control (Git), code reviews, automated testing, and software design principles
• Experience building reporting layers and dashboards with Power BI or similar BI tools
• Experience using modern AI-assisted software development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, or ChatGPT to accelerate engineering productivity
• Ability to communicate complex technical findings clearly to non-technical executive stakeholders
• Self-directed; thrives in ambiguous environments with limited oversight

Strongly Preferred

• Healthcare industry experience — particularly hospital operations, revenue cycle, or patient financial services
• Experience with hospital data systems and/or healthcare data standards (HL7, FHIR, claims data)
• R proficiency for statistical analysis and modeling
• Experience contributing to a re-platforming or system migration initiative
• Familiarity with HIPAA requirements and handling of PHI

Nice to Have

• JavaScript experience — particularly for data visualization layers or lightweight frontend integrations
• Exposure to dbt, Airflow, or similar pipeline orchestration tooling
• Experience in a PE-backed, high-growth, or early-stage company environment
• Cloud platform experience (AWS, Azure, or GCP)

Additional Information

Our Benefits – Supporting You Inside and Out
At Patient Funding Alternatives, we know that caring for others starts with caring for our own people. That’s why we offer a comprehensive, industry-leading benefits package designed to support your health, your future, and your wellbeing. Our team members enjoy medical, dental, and vision coverage through UnitedHealthcare and Guardian, employer-paid life and disability insurance, and a 401(k) plan with company match. We also invest in your wellness — with up to $100 annual reimbursement for fitness, mindfulness, and wellness activities, plus access to mental health tools like the Calm Health app and a 24/7 Employee Assistance Program. From flexible spending accounts to nationwide fitness programs and virtual care, PFA is committed to helping you stay healthy, balanced, and thriving — at work and beyond.