About Centaur Institute
Centaur Institute (formerly OrthoSport Victoria Institute) is a multidisciplinary centre of excellence in musculoskeletal care in Richmond, Melbourne. Orthopaedic surgeons, sports physicians, physiotherapists, exercise physiologists, strength and conditioning coaches and biomechanists work in one integrated model of care, from first presentation through to return to sport and activity.
Research is built into clinical practice. Our high-performance centre includes an instrumented biomechanics laboratory with a force-plate running track, 3D motion capture and isokinetic testing, and we hold research partnerships with the University of Melbourne, Australian Catholic University and Monash University. We build our own digital platforms to collect, analyse and report patient outcomes and biomechanical data at scale.
About the role
We are seeking a Head of Data Science and IT to lead the Institute's technology, data and analytics function. The role owns our clinical research platforms, data infrastructure and applied AI work, and turns clinical and biomechanical data into tools that surgeons, clinicians and researchers use every day. It is also a research role: you will design and conduct studies, publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals and present findings at national and international conferences.
Key responsibilities
1. Set and deliver the Institute's technology and data strategy, aligned with clinical, research and commercial priorities.
2. Lead research in data science and biomechanics: design and conduct clinical and laboratory studies, publish findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals and present them at national and international conferences.
3. Lead, recruit and develop a multidisciplinary team of software engineers, data scientists and data operations staff.
4. Own the design, development and operation of in-house cloud platforms for clinicians and patients, supporting data capture, outcome tracking and reporting, with a focus on reliability, security and usability.
5. Manage IT infrastructure, cloud environments, systems integration and vendors, including clinic systems and laboratory data sources (force plates, motion capture, isokinetic and wearable sensors).
6. Ensure data governance, privacy and security under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Health Records Act 2001 (Vic) and research ethics approvals, including de-identification and access control.
7. Build and maintain clinical databases and registries, with reliable data pipelines, quality assurance and integration of external data sources.
8. Develop and validate statistical, machine learning and causal inference models on registry and biomechanical data to inform treatment, rehabilitation and return-to-sport decisions.
9. Lead applied AI projects on clinical and biomechanics data, from concept and model development through validation to deployment in clinical and research workflows.
10. Translate results for surgeons, physiotherapists and researchers, contribute to research grant applications and supervise research students with university partners.
11. Manage technology budgets, project priorities and delivery timelines, working closely with clinicians, researchers, leadership and external partners to understand their needs and deliver solutions that meet them.
Essential criteria
- PhD in data science, computer science, biomedical engineering, biomechanics or a related quantitative field.
- At least five years of professional experience in data science, analytics or software development, including at least two years leading a technical team.
- Track record of peer-reviewed scientific publications and presentations at scientific conferences.
- Strong programming skills in Python and/or R and SQL, with experience in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP) and modern data and machine learning tooling.
- Demonstrated delivery of production data platforms or applications, preferably in a health or clinical setting.
- Applied expertise in statistics and machine learning, including mixed-effects models, tree-based methods and causal inference.
- Experience handling sensitive health data, with working knowledge of Australian privacy, security and research ethics requirements.
- Ability to communicate complex technical work clearly to clinicians, researchers and non-technical leaders.
Desirable criteria
- Experience with human movement data: force plates, 3D motion capture, wearable IMU or EMG sensors, and musculoskeletal modelling (for example OpenSim).
- Experience with PROMs, clinical registries or longitudinal outcomes research in orthopaedics or sports medicine.
- Experience with causal machine learning and model explainability, applied to estimating treatment effects from observational clinical data and making model outputs interpretable for clinicians.
- Experience with medical image analysis or LLM-based clinical automation.
- Research grant experience or student supervision.
- Experience with product development, intellectual property or commercialisation of health technology.
Pay: $86,100.00 – $163,000.00 per year
Work Location: In person
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