Machine Learning Resident - Client: HQA (12 month term)

“If you are looking to develop a text-to-SQL engine using LLMs that can benefit from RAG-based semantics, self-correcting agentic AI loops and domain fine tuning for the healthcare sector, this is a great opportunity. Join a team of ML scientists and domain experts to build AI solutions in practice.”

Anjana Puliyanda, Machine Learning Scientist

About The Role

This is a paid residency that will be undertaken over a twelve-month period with the potential to be hired by our client, Health Quality Alberta, afterwards (note: at the discretion of the client). The Resident will report to an Amii Scientist and regularly consult with the client team to share insights and engage in knowledge transfer activities. Successful candidates will be members of a cross-functional project team with backgrounds in ML research, project management, software engineering, and new product development. This is a rare opportunity to be mentored by world‑class scientists and to develop something truly impactful.

About Our Client

Health Quality Alberta is a provincial agency that brings together patients, families, and their partners from across healthcare and academia to inspire improvement in patient safety, person‑centred care, and health service quality. They assess and study the healthcare system, identify effective practices, and engage with Albertans to learn about their experiences. Health Quality Alberta’s responsibilities are outlined in the Health Quality Council of Alberta Act. We encourage you to visit their website (https://hqa.ca/) to learn more about them, their survey and measurement work, and the variety of products they produce.

About The Project

Alberta’s health system monitoring remains largely retrospective and dashboard‑driven. System leaders increasingly need to ask real‑time questions about capacity, trends, variation, and service pressures, yet current tools are limited in how much they can provide without analyst support.

This project will be focused on the development and implementation of an AI‑enabled chatbot overlay on existing dashboards to support self‑directed analytics using natural‑language queries. The goal is to deliver immediate value by improving accessibility, usability, and interpretation of existing health system data. This project will also establish the technical, governance, and user‑interaction foundations required to de‑risk and accelerate future development.

Required Skills / Expertise

We’re looking for a talented and enthusiastic individual with solid knowledge of machine learning, demonstrated experience with NLP, LLMs, and familiar with healthcare data.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement RAG‑based approaches for dynamically retrieving schema metadata to semantically enrich the context for LLM prompts in the text‑to‑sql engine.
• Develop syntactic validation of SQL results and implement an iterative agentic loop for self‑correction.
• Benchmark and validate results using different LLM models, and SQL queries of increasing complexity.
• Curate domain‑specific SQL queries to develop an SFT pipeline, and assess performance advantages.
• Identify, prepare, and optimize large structured and unstructured datasets for ML modeling.
• Conduct applied research on ML techniques, with a focus on understanding and addressing the limitations of existing models.
• Collaborate with project team and stakeholders to develop minimum viable products (MVPs) and client focused solutions.
• Engage in regular client meetings, contributing to presentations and reports on project progress.
• Optimize ML pipelines to ensure efficiency, scalability, and real‑time processing capabilities.
• Support the productionalization and deployment of models in client environment.
• Develop an understanding of Administrative Health data, including but not limited to Discharge Abstract Database (DAD), National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS), Practitioner Claims, and more.

Required Qualifications

• Completion of a Computing Science or ML graduate program, MSc. or PhD.
• Research or project experience in machine learning, specifically using NLP tools and techniques.
• Ability to craft zero‑shot/few‑shot prompts, chain‑of‑thought logic, and schema‑linking techniques.
• Familiarity with working with database schemas.
• Working knowledge of LLM‑based tools and agentic workflows.
• Proficient in Python programming language and related ML frameworks, libraries and toolkits (e.g. Scikit learn, Keras, Tensorflow, PyTorch, Pandas, Jupyter notebooks).
• Familiarity with Linux, Git version control, and writing clean code.
• A positive attitude towards learning and understanding a new applied domain.
• Must be able to work full time in person at the Calgary office.
• Must be legally eligible to work in Canada.

Preferred Qualifications

• Publication record in peer‑reviewed academic conferences or relevant journals in machine learning.
• Familiarity with the healthcare system data (nice to have).

Non‑Technical Requirements

• Desire to take ownership of a problem and demonstrated leadership skills.
• Interdisciplinary team player enthusiastic about working together to achieve excellence.
• Capable of critical and independent thought.
• Able to communicate technical concepts clearly and advise on the application of ML.
• Intellectual curiosity and the desire to learn new things, techniques, and technologies.

Why You Should Apply

Besides Gaining Industry Experience, Additional Perks Include

• Work under the mentorship of an Amii Scientist for the duration of the project.
• Participate in professional development activities.
• Gain access to the Amii community and events.
• Build your professional network.
• The opportunity for an ongoing machine learning role at the client’s organization at the end of the term (at the client’s discretion).

About Amii

One of Canada’s three main institutes for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, our world‑renowned researchers drive fundamental and applied research at the University of Alberta (and other academic institutions), training some of the world’s top scientific talent. Our cross‑functional teams work collaboratively with Alberta‑based businesses and organizations to build AI capacity and translate scientific advancement into industry adoption and economic impact.

Amii is an equal opportunity employer and values a diverse workforce. We encourage applications from all qualified individuals without regard to ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age or disability. Accommodations for disability‑related needs throughout the recruitment and selection process are available upon request. Any information provided by you for accommodations will be kept confidential and won’t be used in the selection process.

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