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Variant Scientist Jobs in Austin, TX (NOW HIRING)

Oversee the review of genetic and CNV variant data: interpret NGS and microarray results in the ... Analyze lab data, contribute to or write publications for high-quality scientific journals. May ...

Oversee the review of genetic and CNV variant data: interpret NGS and microarray results in the ... Analyze lab data, contribute to or write publications for high-quality scientific journals. May ...

Data Engineer

Austin, TX · On-site

$113K - $136K/yr

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field (or ... Variant), and security management (RBAC). * Programming: Proficiency in Python for scripting ...

Variant Scientist information

See Austin, TX salary details

$17

$46

$79

How much do variant scientist jobs pay per hour?

As of Sep 7, 2026, the average hourly pay for variant scientist in Austin, TX is $46.17, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $33.49 and $58.49 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is a variant scientist?

Variant Scientists are professionals who analyze genetic variants—differences in DNA sequences—to determine their significance in health and disease. They interpret genomic data, often from whole-genome or exome sequencing, to assess whether specific variants may cause or contribute to medical conditions. Their work is crucial in clinical genetics, precision medicine, and biomedical research, helping guide patient diagnosis and treatment. Variant Scientists collaborate with clinicians, bioinformaticians, and laboratory personnel to provide accurate and actionable genetic insights.

What does a variant scientist do?

As a variant scientist, you work for a research laboratory in a university or a medical facility to test and study variations of genes and the effects they have on human development. As part of your duties, you aid in the development of new tests to discover gene abnormalities, perform analysis on patient samples to identify possible mutations, and record your findings to assist in scientific research. You also have heavy reporting responsibilities that may require in-depth computer and writing skills, the ability to analyze data, and strong attention to detail. In this role, you may cater to a specific health field, like pediatrics or oncology.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a variant scientist, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Variant Scientist, you need a solid background in genetics, molecular biology, and bioinformatics, typically supported by an advanced degree such as a PhD or MSc in a related field. Familiarity with next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms, variant annotation tools, and data analysis software like GATK or ANNOVAR is essential. Strong analytical thinking, attention to detail, and effective communication skills help you interpret complex genetic data and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams. These skills ensure accurate variant interpretation, drive discoveries, and support precision medicine initiatives.

What are some common challenges faced by variant scientists in interpreting genetic data, and how are these typically addressed within a team?

Variant Scientists often encounter challenges such as distinguishing between benign and pathogenic variants, managing large volumes of sequencing data, and staying updated with rapidly evolving genetic databases. These challenges are typically addressed by collaborating closely with bioinformaticians, clinical geneticists, and laboratory personnel to review findings and validate interpretations. Regular team meetings, use of standardized classification guidelines like ACMG, and leveraging advanced software tools help ensure accurate and consistent variant analysis.

What are the most commonly searched types of Variant Scientist jobs in Austin, TX?

The most popular types of Variant Scientist jobs in Austin, TX are:

What cities near Austin, TX are hiring for Variant Scientist jobs?

Cities near Austin, TX with the most Variant Scientist job openings:

Infographic showing various Variant Scientist job openings in Austin, TX as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% Internship, 1% As Needed, 89% Full Time, 6% Part Time, and 3% Contract. Highlights an 90% Physical, 3% Hybrid, and 7% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $96,027 per year, or $46.2 per hour.

Lead Decision Intelligence Engineer (AI) - NBA

Humana Inc

Austin, TX • On-site

$150 - $200/hr

Other

Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Retirement, PTO

Posted 2 days ago

New


Humana rating

8.0

Company rating: 8.0 out of 10

Based on 267 frontline employees who took The Breakroom Quiz

173rd of 315 rated insurance


Job description

Become a part of our caring community

The Lead Decision Intelligence Engineer (AI) owns the application of Decision Intelligence and agentic AI across the NBA platform. This role analyzes and formalizes the business decisions that drive member engagement, translating stakeholder objectives, constraints, policies, and available data into structured decision models that can be evaluated, optimized, and automated. Working closely with business, product, and engineering teams, you identify where decisions should remain rule-based, where predictive models should be applied, and where agentic systems can create measurable value.

You then design and build production-grade decision intelligence capabilities that help teams create, understand, optimize, and govern member actions. Using LangGraph, LangChain, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Databricks, and Humana's AI Gateway, you build agentic workflows that reason through decision processes, generate recommendations, explain tradeoffs, assist with action authoring, and continuously improve decision outcomes. This is a hands-on technical leadership role that combines decision science, AI engineering, and software architecture while leading a small team of engineers.

Key Responsibilities
  • Decision intelligence modeling -
  • Decision decomposition -
  • Optimization strategy -
  • Agentic workflow delivery -
  • Action Library intelligence -
  • LLM and agent engineering -
  • Knowledge and retrieval systems -
  • Reinforcement learning integration -
  • Evaluation and experimentation -
  • AI governance and safety -
  • Team leadership -
  • Cross-functional partnership -
Use your skills to make an impact Required Qualifications
  • Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field
  • 6+ years of software engineering, machine learning engineering, AI engineering, or decision intelligence experience, including at least 1–2 years in a technical leadership capacity.
  • Strong Python engineering experience building and operating production AI systems.
  • Hands-on experience building agentic applications using LangGraph, LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, or similar orchestration frameworks.
  • Experience integrating Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Vertex AI, Anthropic, OpenAI, or comparable enterprise AI platforms.
  • Strong understanding of Decision Intelligence concepts, including decision modeling, optimization, decision automation, objectives, constraints, and outcome measurement.
  • Experience implementing LLM application patterns including tool calling, structured outputs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), memory management, and workflow orchestration.
  • Experience building evaluation frameworks for AI systems, including automated evaluation, human review, performance measurement, and experimentation.
  • Ability to map business processes into formal decision frameworks and communicate those models to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Demonstrated ability to lead a small engineering team while remaining a hands-on contributor.
  • Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex AI and decision architectures to senior leadership.
Preferred Qualifications
  • Experience with Decision Intelligence methodologies, decision modeling notation, decision requirements analysis, influence diagrams, decision graphs, or business decision management frameworks.
  • Experience operationalizing reinforcement learning, contextual bandits, recommendation systems, or next-best-action optimization platforms.
  • Experience with Databricks, MLflow, Feature Store, Mosaic AI, or enterprise machine learning platforms.
  • Experience with Azure AI Search, vector databases, semantic retrieval systems, and enterprise knowledge architectures.
  • Experience with observability platforms such as LangSmith, OpenTelemetry, PromptFlow, Azure Monitor, or equivalent AI monitoring solutions.
  • Experience integrating AI capabilities into enterprise software platforms and workflow-driven applications.
  • Familiarity with Adobe Experience Platform (AEP), Salesforce, CRM platforms, healthcare engagement platforms, or marketing technology ecosystems.
  • Background in healthcare, insurance, or another highly regulated industry with auditability, explainability, and compliance requirements.
Key Responsibilities Microservices & Backend Engineering
  • Architect, implement, and operate microservices that deliver:

  • Action and variant metadata

  • Context-aware policy and eligibility evaluation

  • Versioned, read-optimized APIs for high-performance runtime consumption

  • Guarantee that services are:

  • Highly available, with low latency

  • Horizontally scalable for increased demand

  • Backward compatible to support safe evolution and upgrades

  • Apply industry best practices for API design, schema evolution, service isolation, and secure integration.

Database & Schema Design
  • Design, deploy, and maintain resilient database schemas to support:

  • Comprehensive action and variant catalogs

  • Versioning, lifecycle management, and effective dating

  • Rule bindings and complex metadata relationships

  • Select and operate appropriate data stores (relational, document, key-value) tailored to workload and scalability requirements.

  • Implement and monitor:

  • Schema migration and backward compatibility strategies

  • Indexing and query optimization for performance

  • Data integrity, consistency, and reliability

  • Auditability and traceability for compliance and governance

Rules & Policy Engine Integration
  • Integrate and manage enterprise-grade rules engines to support:

  • Eligibility, constraints, and business policies

  • Suppression, cooldowns, exclusions, and other operational guardrails

  • Policy-driven allow/deny logic

  • Work with technologies such as Drools (DRL/DMN), IBM ODM, DMN-based services, OPA/Rego, or similar.

  • Ensure rule execution is deterministic, versioned, stateless, and free from unintended side effects.

AI-Assisted & Agentic Engineering
  • Utilize AI-powered and agentic tools to:

  • Generate and refactor database schemas and service logic

  • Streamline rule authoring, validation, and ongoing refactoring

  • Detect and address conflicting or redundant rules early in the development cycle

  • Automatically produce comprehensive test cases and explore edge scenarios

  • Apply AI responsibly to reduce manual effort while safeguarding clarity, correctness, and strong governance.

Testing, Reliability & Governance
  • Develop automated tests for:

  • Database migrations and schema changes

  • Service-level contracts and API backward compatibility

  • Rules behaviour, precedence, and edge cases

  • Ensure platforms are fully observable and resilient, featuring:

  • Structured logging, metrics, and alerting

  • Clear error handling, fallback strategies, and robust incident management

  • Support audit and compliance requirements through traceable and reproducible system behaviour

Collaboration & Technical Leadership
  • Work closely with platform, data, and machine learning teams to maintain clean integration points and shared standards.

  • Participate actively in architecture and design reviews to uphold platform quality.

  • Mentor junior engineers and contribute to technical standards and best practices.

Required Qualifications
  • Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field
  • 8 or more years of progressive IT experience as a senior developer in large IT projects
  • 2 or more years of project leadership experience
  • Must be passionate about contributing to an organization focused on continuously improving consumer experiences
Preferred Qualifications
  • Master's Degree
Additional Information Work Style:

Remote/Hybrid - Preferably Boston, MA. Occasional travel to Humana's offices for training or meetings may be required.

Work Hours

Typical business hours are Monday-Friday, 8 hours/day, 5 days/week-- some flexibility might be possible, depending on business needs.

Very minimal travel might be required for training, meetings, and/or conferences

Interview Format

As part of our hiring process, we will be using on-demand technology provided by Hire Vue, a third-party vendor. This technology provides our team of recruiters and hiring managers with an enhanced method for decision-making through on-demand candidate assessments.

If you are selected to move forward from your application prescreen, you will receive correspondence inviting you to participate in an on-demand assessment with pre-determined questions. You should anticipate the assessment to take approximately 10-15 minutes.

Your on-demand assessment will be reviewed, and you will subsequently be informed if you will be moving forward to next round of interviews.

SSN Task via Workday

Should you be extended a formal employment offer you will receive a request to enter your SSN into our Workday system to scan for duplicate profiles.

Work at Home Requirements: To ensure Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees’ ability to work effectively, the self-provided internet service of Home or Hybrid Home/Office employees must meet the following criteria: At minimum, a download speed of 25 Mbps and an upload speed of 10 Mbps is required; wireless, wired cable or DSL connection is suggested. In certain roles, the minimum recommended internet speed required by Humana may not be sufficient for business needs. Humana reserves the right to require associates to upgrade their internet service if necessary. Work from a dedicated space lacking ongoing interruptions to protect member PHI / HIPAA information.

Travel: While this is a remote position, occasional travel to Humana's offices for training or meetings may be required.

Scheduled Weekly Hours

40

Pay Range

The compensation range below reflects a good faith estimate of starting base pay for full time (40 hours per week) employment at the time of posting. The pay range may be higher or lower based on geographic location and individual pay will vary based on demonstrated job related skills, knowledge, experience, education, certifications, etc.

$129,300 - $177,800 per year

This job is eligible for a bonus incentive plan. This incentive opportunity is based upon company and/or individual performance.

Description of Benefits

Humana, Inc. and its affiliated subsidiaries (collectively, "Humana") offers competitive benefits that support whole-person well-being. Associate benefits are designed to encourage personal wellness and smart healthcare decisions for you and your family while also knowing your life extends outside of work. Among our benefits, Humana provides medical, dental and vision benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan, time off (including paid time off, company and personal holidays, paid parental and caregiver leave), short-term and long-term disability, life insurance and many other opportunities.

Application Deadline: 09-29-2026

About us

About Humana: Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) is a leading U.S. healthcare company. Through our Humana insurance services and our CenterWell healthcare services, we make it easier for the millions of people we serve to achieve their best health – delivering the care and service they need, when they need it. These efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare and Medicaid, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large. Learn more about what we offer atHumana.comand atCenterWell.com.

Equal Opportunity Employer

It is the policy of Humana not to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, genetic information, disability or protected veteran status. It is also the policy of Humana to take affirmative action, in compliance with Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and VEVRAA, to employ and to advance in employment individuals with disability or protected veteran status, and to base all employment decisions only on valid job requirements. This policy shall apply to all employment actions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring

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About Humana

Sourced by ZipRecruiter

Humana Inc., headquartered in Louisville, KY., is a leading health care company that offers a wide range of insurance products and health and wellness services that incorporate an integrated approach to lifelong well-being. By leveraging the strengths of its core businesses, Humana believes it can better explore opportunities for existing and emerging adjacencies in health care that can further enhance wellness opportunities for the millions of people across the nation with whom the company has relationships.

Industry

Health care and social assistance

Company size

10,000+ Employees

Headquarters location

Louisville, KY, US

Year founded

1961

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