Senior Researcher, Medicaid Policy and Financing

Responsibilities

• Manage day-to-day Medicaid-related project operations in roles such as principal investigator, project director, or task lead, ensuring deliverables are completed on time, within budget, and to a high standard.
• Lead collaborative project teams by developing timelines and coordinating staff assignments.
• Identify research problems and design rigorous applied studies, including aligned research questions, methodologies, and analytic plans.
• Apply subject-matter expertise to design and implement relevant, responsive, and impactful research, operations, and technical assistance projects.
• Lead and oversee analyses of Medicaid claims (T-MSIS Analytic File), hospital cost reports, and other complex administrative data.
• Devise and implement innovative solutions to practical challenges in applied research.
• Lead Medicaid data collection and analysis efforts, including identifying trends, outliers, and Medicaid data reporting issues, and synthesizing findings.
• Communicate study progress and findings clearly and effectively through reports, briefings, presentations, visualizations, and other materials to describe policy-relevant findings and actionable insights.
• Represent the organization professionally in client interactions and manage client and stakeholder relationships with awareness of the broader policy and practice landscape.
• Communicate effectively, both orally and in writing, with clients, partners, and stakeholders, and foster positive, collaborative working relationships.
• Contribute thoughtfully and creatively to project teams.
• Contribute to business development by identifying opportunities, developing client relationships, and leading or contributing substantively to competitive proposals.

Qualifications

• PhD in related subject area (e.g., Economics, Health Services Research, Public Policy, or a related discipline) with 3+ years of relevant experience or master's degree with 7+ years of relevant experience.
• Extensive knowledge of Medicaid financing and policy, including areas such as federal-state financing, payment policy, managed care, supplemental payments, waivers, delivery-system reform, or program integrity and fraud oversight.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex ideas into actionable work plans and timelines.
• Experience managing project and/or task teams on research, evaluation, and technical assistance projects.
• Experience building and maintaining strong client and partner relationships.
• Experience supporting business development efforts, including grant and proposal writing.
• Experience analyzing claims and other large or complex data sets.
• Experience working in contract research and/or evaluation organizations.

Skills

• Strong organizational and interpersonal skills including strong communication skills with the ability to produce concise, high-level summaries and briefings.
• Strong negotiator and communicator, with excellent client and partner management skills.
• Strong presentation and facilitation skills.
• Strong attention to detail and commitment to accuracy when writing.
• Can collaborate effectively in a virtual work environment.
• Ability to analyze Medicaid claims and other data using statistical software such as R, Python, SAS, or Stata.