"Clinical Data Specialist"

Posted: 13-Feb-26

Location: San Francisco, California

Type: Full-time

Categories: Staff/Administrative

Internal Number: 87897BR

This position requires regular on-site work.

At UCSF, collaboration and innovation are at the heart of our mission - in our hospitals and clinics, classrooms, labs, and offices. To advance excellence in support of research, we are strengthening our on-site presence across the university. As part of this commitment, most IT teams are expected to support campus-based work. This role will be expected to work onsite as determined by the hiring manager. This includes attending onsite events as scheduled by the management team.

The key job responsibilities of the Clinical Data Specialist include managing research customer requests for data sets, working with the client to understand data needs, developing clear specifications of requirements, building complex queries, writing Structured Query Language (SQL) code, and translating those needs into data extract, documentation, and code. This may include implementing tools applied to clinical information that would allow clients to achieve their research aims. The Clinical Data Specialist works closely with clinicians across all hospital/healthcare departments to understand and effectively extract data from data management systems. The incumbent will apply sound programming principles and standardized procedures for all requests to ensure reproducibility. The incumbent will support requests from various research domains. The incumbent must provide excellent customer service, troubleshoot system issues, and validate results.

The Clinical Data Specialist will build code against UCSF's APeX or other electronic healthcare systems. This role must demonstrate clear communication with clients and team members. Other responsibilities include validating data, providing output in a clear, understandable format, and overall maintaining strong customer relationships with clients.

Applies advanced professional clinical informatics concepts and extensive knowledge of industry practices to projects of all levels of scope and complexity. This includes analyzing requirements and developing user specifications for reporting and data analysis. Must have a basic understanding of medical data and statistics. Will analyze data from clinical systems to confirm results meet the requirements set by the researcher.

This position will also be the technical expert for the CMS Data Reuse program. The CMS Data Resuse program promotes the reuse of Medicare and Medicaid data for UCSF researchers. The program includes technical infrastructure, contracting support, and community building. The incumbent will serve as the liaison between researchers and technical teams to ensure each project has sufficient computing and storage resources, appropriate research tools, and timely service and support. The role serves as the official institution data steward for the files we receive from CMS. This includes communicating to the technical teams that support the systems that house the data, as well as CMS's security and compliance requirements. The incumbent will provide consulting services in the following areas: study protocol/aims consultation, funding opportunities, appropriate data selection, IRB protocol application development, and CMS reuse application process, and will ensure the recruitment of institutional experts in these fields when needed. The role will be responsible for Data Use Agreement (DUA) lifecycle management services, maintaining the CMS DUA through the project lifetime, including personnel changes, data set changes, and amendment submissions. Finally, community building is a large part of this program to ensure new research is supported and projects progress. The role will host work-in-progress meetings targeted to Medicare/Medicaid data user groups and pull in institutional experts to support the study design and progress of presented projects.

The final salary and offer components are subject to additional approvals based on UC policy. Your placement within the salary range is dependent on a number of factors including your work experience and internal equity within this position classification at UCSF. For positions that are represented by a labor union, placement within the salary range will be guided by the rules in the collective bargaining agreement.

The salary range for this position is $113,800 - $178,300 (Annual Rate).

To learn more about the benefits of working at UCSF, including total compensation, please visit: https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/compensation-and-benefits/index.html