A global higher education leader in innovative teaching, research and public service, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill consistently ranks as one of the nation’s top public universities. Known for its beautiful campus, world-class medical care, commitment to the arts and top athletic programs, Carolina is an ideal place to teach, work and learn.

Primary Purpose of Organizational Unit

The UNC School of Medicine has a rich tradition of excellence and care. Our mission is to improve the health and wellbeing of North Carolinians, and others whom we serve. We accomplish this by providing leadership and excellence in the interrelated areas of patient care, education, and research. We strive to promote faculty, staff, and learner development in a respectful environment where our colleagues demonstrate professionalism, enhance learning, and create personal and professional sustainability. We optimize our partnership with the UNC Health System through close collaboration and commitment to service.

Position Summary

The NC TraCS Informatics and Data Science (IDSci) service provides clinical informatics support to the School of Medicine, School of Public Health, and other health affairs schools. The Research Informatics Specialist will join a skilled and highly collaborative team of data analysts, software developers, and data scientists. The core purpose of this position is to support clinical data-driven research at UNC through services and tool development.

Responsibilities include:

• Perform SQL-based programming against UNC’s clinical data warehouse to identify patient cohorts and develop patient datasets.
• Consult with and collaborate with researchers to ensure programming work aligns with project needs.
• Develop ETL (extract, transform, and load) and data integration processes to support common data models (OMOP, PCORnet) using appropriate technologies (SQL, Python, or R).
• Carefully following UNC’s regulatory and governance policy to ensure data integrity and security.
• In collaboration with IDSci team, identify potential enhancements in current workflows and data architecture.
• Implement quality assurance strategies, such as data validation and peer code review.
• Write and maintain up-to-date supporting documentation. Ensure code is well-commented and use GitLab/GitHub to manage code changes and track data lineage.
• Provide technical leadership and direction for assigned projects and/or data requests.

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements

Master’s and 1-2 years’ experience; or Bachelors and 2-4 years’ experience; or will accept a combination of related education and experience in substitution.

Required Qualifications, Competencies, and Experience

This position requires two or more years of relevant work experience and:

• Expert-level knowledge of SQL programming, data modeling, and relational database systems such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, etc.
• Past experience working with health care data in an analytic capacity, particularly electronic health record and/or claims data.
• Demonstrable past experience in scoping technical projects in terms of length of time, competencies and cost. Individual will be expected to manage multiple projects at once while delivering high-quality work on time.
• Excellent written and oral business communication skills. Public speaking at meetings and conferences may be required. The ability to clearly convey technical concepts to non-technical clients is a must.

Preferred Qualifications, Competencies, and Experience

Preferred qualifications include:

• Additional programming competencies outside of SQL, such as SAS, R, Python, or Java.
• Demonstrable understanding of regulations around clinical data used for research purposes, particularly HIPAA and Institutional Review Board rules.
• Experience working with faculty in an academic research environment.
• Experience working with Epic Clarity, OMOP, PCORnet Common Data Model, i2b2, or FHIR
• Knowledge of health care vocabularies (ICD, CPT, RxNorm, etc.)
• Experience executing projects in alignment with software development/programming best practice: quality assurance testing, Git, SDLC (software development lifecycle)
• Experience working with non-EHR data sources like wearable device data or claims, etc

Special Physical/Mental Requirements

Campus Security Authority Responsibilities