Full Specialist Position - Department of Psychiatry

Full Specialist Position - Department of Psychiatry

The Department of Psychiatry at UCSF is currently seeking a candidate for a Full Specialist position.

Position Duties:

• This role applies specialized expertise in masking within clinical trials to design, implement, and evaluate strategies that preserve trial integrity and minimize unblinding risk. It involves developing and assessing approaches to measure masking success, including quantifying expectancy effects and their influence on study outcomes. The position provides methodological guidance on how masking considerations shape study design, data collection, and statistical analysis, and works closely with Principal Investigators to develop study protocols and analysis plans.
• The role also leads data quality and infrastructure efforts, including designing randomization procedures, building and maintaining structured databases, and developing reproducible analytic pipelines tailored to complex psychedelic datasets. Responsibilities include establishing standardized data cleaning protocols, conducting interim and final analyses, and applying advanced statistical methods to disentangle treatment effects from masking-related biases. The individual collaborates with investigators to interpret findings and translates results into publication-ready outputs, while contributing to manuscripts, grants, and regulatory reports.

Required Qualifications:

• Terminal degree (or equivalent degree) or ten or more years of experience in relevant specialization
• Strong interest in clinical trials focusing on mental and/or medical health and psychedelics
• Demonstrated expertise, by having 2 or more first or last author publications in print, focusing on the following topics:
• Challenges of and analytic complexity of masking or blinding in psychedelic clinical trials
• Expectancy bias or placebo effects in clinical trials
• Previous experience applying statistical knowledge in evaluation of outcomes for experimental drug trials
• Strong statistical expertise with knowledge of and ability to suggest/apply appropriate approaches to data analysis
• Experience working with REDCap/Qualtrics data exports
• Advanced knowledge of python, R, or equivalent data analytic systems
• Experience working with a large team, with a wide range of backgrounds
• Ability to balance competing priorities
• Strong interpersonal communication skills
• Engagement in scientific community
• Ability to present and discuss complex statistical and technical topics with a range of audiences (i.e. translating technical jargon to those with less experience).
• Strong interest in citizen science research

Applicants must apply online with a CV. See Table 24B for the salary range for this position. A reasonable estimate for this position is $93,200 - $194,800.