This role will contribute to the VITAL (real-time health data for Trials, Artificial Intelligence and a Learning Health System) platform, a federally funded, secure, high-performance computing environment being developed in Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta. VITAL will enable hospital data to be collected every 24 hours, linked, de-identified, and accessed by researchers through a unified portal.
VITAL expands upon the GEMINI platform at Unity Health Toronto, a collaborative data and analytics platform that enables more than 35 Ontario hospitals to accelerate research and quality improvement and support excellent hospital care.
The VITAL team is seeking an experienced Data Engineer to extract, transform, and load data from source systems—including EHRs, administrative databases, and registries—into repositories and pipelines for reporting, business intelligence, statistical modelling, and machine learning. The role has end-to-end scope, from data collection, requirements gathering, and database analysis through pipeline design, programming, quality assurance, and ongoing maintenance of data pipelines and target data systems.
The incumbent will liaise with departments at Unity Health Toronto and across VITAL’s collaborating institutions and hospitals, supporting operational excellence for GEMINI and VITAL. This is a challenging, rewarding, fast-paced environment with clinicians, researchers, data scientists, hospital IT teams, and hospital leaders. The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of health data systems and technologies, excellent stakeholder skills, and initiative.
This is a 12-month, full-time contract role, with the possibility of extension or becoming permanent depending on funding availability, organizational needs, and performance.
Engage stakeholders to understand analytic, research, and business needs; collaboratively develop and validate concrete requirements for data collection and data-pipeline design.
Document business requirements as needed.
Analyze source-system databases to identify data structures, flows, functions, and interdependencies using custom SQL scripts or enterprise tools.
Document and present findings to stakeholders.
Conduct detailed interviews with subject-matter experts, data scientists, and hospital IT teams to support data collection and inform logical, scalable pipeline design.
Document pipeline models using mock-ups or partial outputs as appropriate, and validate models with stakeholders.
Construct and automate data pipelines from validated models.
Ingest and standardize clinical data from source systems into target data models and pipelines.
Design and implement robust error- and exception-handling procedures.
Document data-pipeline architecture.
Routinely monitor system logs and alerts to detect errors and exceptions.
Manually run jobs or restart pipelines when automation fails.
Maintain ongoing quality assurance to identify and correct data drift.
Collaborate with IT Security to monitor and protect pipelines against data leakage and ensure compliance with healthcare privacy policies and regulations.
Patch or update pipeline software and scripting tools as needed.
Monitor pipeline health and optimize code when necessary.
Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Biostatistics, or a related discipline, with 3-5 years of relevant experience.
Demonstrated experience managing large-scale data projects; experience with healthcare data systems and datasets (e.g., EHR, CIHI, clinical registries) is preferred.
Extensive knowledge of data-pipeline design and development.
Mastery of SQL and at least one of R or Python; working knowledge of relational databases such as PostgreSQL or MySQL is preferred.
Experience designing and running testing scenarios.
Knowledge of Linux commands and shell scripting.
Working knowledge of version-control and collaboration platforms, such as GitHub or GitLab.
Strong knowledge of data-warehouse and business-intelligence concepts, including facts, dimensions, star/snowflake schemas, 3NF modelling, and metadata management.
Knowledge of HL7, FHIR, integration engines, and FHIR servers is preferred.
Familiarity with cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, GCP) is preferred.
Experience with data orchestration (e.g., Airflow) and containerization technologies is preferred.
Sound judgment regarding issues to escalate versus resolve independently, including proposing possible resolutions.
Ability to learn new technologies quickly.
Ability to take responsibility for all aspects of pipeline development, automation, improvement, and operations for a project.
Ability to work effectively across organizational levels in a flexible, collaborative, and adaptable team environment.
Candidates who don’t meet every qualification are still encouraged to apply.
Note: As part of the recruitment process, automated tools may be used to assist in the initial review of application materials.
Unity Health Toronto is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive organization. We strive to provide a recruitment process that is barrier-free and in compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and the Ontario Human Rights Code. We understand that you may require an accommodation at any stage of the recruitment process. When you are contacted, please inform the Talent Acquisition Specialist and we will work with you to meet your accommodation needs. We want to emphasize that all accommodation requests are handled with the utmost confidentiality, respecting your privacy and dignity.
