Key Takeaways
- Apply through careers.ucsf.edu for staff and clinical positions and through aprecruit.ucsf.edu for academic faculty appointments. Confirm which portal matches your role before investing time in the application.
- UCSF uses Oracle PeopleSoft for its career portal and applicant tracking system. Format your resume or CV with standard section headings, reverse chronological order, no graphics, and PDF or Word format to ensure clean parsing.
- Many UCSF positions are union-represented (CNA, UPTE, AFSCME, Teamsters) with publicly posted step-and-grade salary scales. Internal candidates often have priority for posted requisitions, which can extend the external candidate timeline.
- Behavioral interviews are mapped explicitly to the PRIDE values — Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Diversity, and Excellence. Prepare concrete STAR-format examples for each value before your panel.
- UCSF is consistently ranked the best hospital in California and a top-ten national hospital across multiple specialties by U.S. News & World Report, with a Magnet-designated nursing organization, NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center, and Level I pediatric trauma designation.
- Epic (branded internally as APeX) is UCSF's enterprise EHR. Prior Epic certification or strong end-user experience is a meaningful advantage for clinical, informatics, and revenue cycle roles.
- Pre-employment requirements are extensive and non-negotiable: background check, occupational health clearance, immunization verification (including annual flu shot), TB screening, primary-source license verification, and N95 fit testing for direct patient care roles.
- UCSF's stated commitment to equity and anti-racism is taken seriously throughout hiring. Faculty applications require a separate Contributions to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement that is independently evaluated.
- San Francisco cost of living is among the highest in the United States. UCSF offers limited housing programs (Mission Bay and Aldea on Mount Sutro), commuter benefits, and shuttle service between campuses — clarifying these logistics early in the process is appropriate and expected.
About UCSF Health
Application Process
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1
Search and apply on the official UCSF careers portal at careers
Search and apply on the official UCSF careers portal at careers.ucsf.edu, which is powered by Oracle PeopleSoft. Filter roles by job family (Nursing, Physicians, Allied Health, Research, Administrative, IT), location (Parnassus, Mission Bay, Mount Zion, Oakland, St. Mary's, Saint Francis, ambulatory sites), employment type (career, contract, per diem, limited), and union representation. Faculty and academic appointments are posted separately on the UCSF Academic Recruit system at aprecruit.ucsf.edu, while volunteer and student positions follow their own portals.
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2
Create a UCSF candidate profile and submit your application with a tailored resu
Create a UCSF candidate profile and submit your application with a tailored resume or CV plus any required cover letter, references, license numbers, and certifications. The PeopleSoft system asks structured questions about education, prior UC employment, and equal opportunity demographics — answer every required field, since incomplete applications are automatically screened out. Save your profile so you can apply to multiple requisitions and receive job alerts.
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3
Complete a recruiter screen, typically a 20 to 30 minute phone or Zoom conversat
Complete a recruiter screen, typically a 20 to 30 minute phone or Zoom conversation with a UCSF talent acquisition specialist or, for nursing roles, a nurse recruiter. Expect questions about your motivation for joining an academic medical center, salary expectations, schedule flexibility, licensure status, and high-level fit with the role. For union-represented positions (CNA-RN, AFSCME, UPTE, Teamsters), the recruiter will explain how seniority, internal transfer rights, and contract provisions affect the timeline.
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4
Interview with the hiring manager and unit team
Interview with the hiring manager and unit team. Clinical roles usually involve a panel interview with the nurse manager or medical director, a charge nurse or senior staff member, and sometimes an HR partner — frequently held on the unit so you can see the work environment. Research and administrative roles tend to schedule sequential one-on-ones with the principal investigator or department leader, peer staff, and stakeholders. Behavioral interview questions mapped to UCSF's PRIDE values (Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Diversity, Excellence) are standard across all functions.
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5
Complete role-specific assessments
Complete role-specific assessments. Nursing candidates may be asked to discuss clinical scenarios, demonstrate familiarity with Epic (UCSF's EHR), or sit for a written clinical reasoning exercise. Research and laboratory roles often include a technical interview, a journal club discussion, or a chalk talk. IT and data roles typically include a technical screen with coding, system design, or analytics components. Faculty searches add a job talk, chalk talk, and meetings with department leadership.
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6
Receive a contingent offer, then complete pre-employment requirements before you
Receive a contingent offer, then complete pre-employment requirements before your start date. UCSF requires a background check, occupational health clearance (including TB screening and verification of measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, hepatitis B, Tdap, and annual influenza immunizations), drug screening for certain roles, license and certification primary-source verification, and confirmation of right to work in the United States. Clinical staff complete fit testing for N95 respirators and Epic EHR onboarding training before going live on the floor.
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7
Attend UCSF New Employee Orientation and unit-specific onboarding
Attend UCSF New Employee Orientation and unit-specific onboarding. New hires complete a formal NEO covering UCSF history, PRIDE values, compliance, HIPAA, and benefits enrollment, followed by department orientation, preceptorship for clinical roles (often 6 to 12 weeks for new graduate RNs in the New Graduate Residency Program), and assignment of an Oracle/PeopleSoft self-service account, UCSF email, and badge access.
Resume Tips for UCSF Health
Lead with credentials and licenses prominently displayed at the top of your resu
Lead with credentials and licenses prominently displayed at the top of your resume or CV. UCSF Health is a clinical and academic environment where degrees, board certifications, state licensure (RN, MD, NP, PA, LCSW, RPh, RT, etc.), DEA registration where applicable, ACLS/BLS/PALS/NRP certifications, and specialty certifications (CCRN, CNOR, OCN, CEN, CPHQ) carry decisive weight. List the issuing body, certification number where appropriate, and expiration date so recruiters and credentialing staff can verify quickly.
Use a CV format for faculty, postdoctoral, physician, and research positions and
Use a CV format for faculty, postdoctoral, physician, and research positions and a traditional resume for administrative, IT, and most allied health roles. Academic CVs at UCSF should include peer-reviewed publications (with PubMed IDs or DOIs), grant funding history with role and dollar amounts, invited talks, teaching appointments, mentees, committee service, and clinical privileges. Administrative resumes should stay concise (1 to 2 pages) and quantify operational impact.
Quantify clinical and operational outcomes wherever possible
Quantify clinical and operational outcomes wherever possible. UCSF cares about evidence — patient volumes managed, length-of-stay reductions, readmission rate improvements, HCAHPS or patient satisfaction gains, throughput increases, cost avoidance, grant dollars secured, publication counts, mentees graduated, or process improvement results delivered. Numbers convert generic responsibilities into demonstrated competence.
Highlight academic medical center, safety-net, or quaternary-care experience
Highlight academic medical center, safety-net, or quaternary-care experience. UCSF treats the most complex patients in Northern California and partners with Zuckerberg San Francisco General to serve underserved populations. Experience at other AMCs (Stanford, UCLA, Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, Mass General Brigham, Johns Hopkins, Penn Medicine), large teaching hospitals, NCI-designated cancer centers, Magnet-recognized organizations, or Federally Qualified Health Centers signals readiness for UCSF's complexity, teaching environment, and equity mission.
Showcase Epic EHR proficiency and other UCSF technology stack experience
Showcase Epic EHR proficiency and other UCSF technology stack experience. Epic is UCSF's enterprise electronic health record (branded internally as APeX), and prior Epic certification or strong end-user experience is highly prized for clinical, informatics, and revenue cycle roles. For IT, research computing, and data roles, list specific systems and skills — Oracle PeopleSoft, Workday, OnCore, REDCap, AWS or GCP, Snowflake, Tableau, Power BI, Python, R, SAS, FHIR, HL7, and HIPAA-compliant data handling.
Demonstrate alignment with UCSF's PRIDE values and equity commitments
Demonstrate alignment with UCSF's PRIDE values and equity commitments. Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Diversity, and Excellence are not slogans — they appear in performance reviews and interview rubrics. Provide concrete examples of culturally responsive care, anti-racism practice, work with vulnerable populations, interdisciplinary collaboration, and inclusive leadership. Faculty applications also require a separate Contributions to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement evaluated as part of the academic review.
Keep formatting clean and ATS-compatible for Oracle PeopleSoft Talent Acquisitio
Keep formatting clean and ATS-compatible for Oracle PeopleSoft Talent Acquisition. Use standard section headings (Education, Licensure and Certification, Clinical Experience, Research Experience, Publications, Teaching, Service), reverse chronological order, single-column layout, no graphics or text boxes, standard fonts at 10 to 12 point, and PDF or Word upload format. PeopleSoft parses uploaded resumes into structured profile fields, so any formatting that confuses the parser can drop you out of recruiter searches.
Tailor each application to the specific requisition number, unit, and patient po
Tailor each application to the specific requisition number, unit, and patient population. UCSF posts hundreds of requisitions across dozens of specialty units (cardiothoracic ICU, pediatric oncology, fetal surgery, neuro-IR, transplant, gender-affirming care, primary care, etc.), and a generic resume that does not reference the unit's patient population, technology, or program signature underperforms. Mention specific UCSF programs you would contribute to — your familiarity with the institution shows preparation.
ATS System: Oracle PeopleSoft
UCSF Health uses Oracle PeopleSoft (PeopleSoft Talent Acquisition / Candidate Gateway) for its staff and clinical career portal at careers.ucsf.edu. The PeopleSoft platform handles requisition posting, candidate profile creation, application submission, structured screening question logic, recruiter workflow, and offer management. PeopleSoft parses uploaded resumes into structured candidate profile fields and supports keyword-based recruiter searches. UCSF faculty and academic positions use a separate system, UCSF Academic Recruit (aprecruit.ucsf.edu), which is purpose-built for University of California academic searches and supports search committee review, reference letter collection, and DEI statement evaluation.
- Create a complete UCSF candidate profile on careers.ucsf.edu so you can apply to multiple requisitions, save searches, and receive automated job alerts as new positions are posted
- Use standard section headings (Education, Licensure and Certification, Clinical or Professional Experience, Research, Publications, Teaching) that PeopleSoft can reliably parse — avoid creative or non-standard headers
- Upload your resume or CV as a PDF or Word document — these formats parse most cleanly through Oracle PeopleSoft and preserve formatting for human reviewers
- Avoid graphics, tables, multi-column layouts, headers and footers, and text boxes that can corrupt the parsed candidate profile and cause recruiter searches to miss your application
- Complete every structured field in the online application — prior UC employment, equal opportunity demographics, license numbers, certifications — even when the same information appears on your uploaded resume, because PeopleSoft filters on structured data
- Mirror keywords from the job posting in your resume, especially for unit names, EHR systems (Epic / APeX), certifications (CCRN, CNOR, OCN, ACLS), and specialty areas — recruiters search PeopleSoft using these terms
- For faculty positions, use UCSF Academic Recruit at aprecruit.ucsf.edu instead, and prepare a complete academic CV, research statement, teaching statement, and a separate Contributions to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement that is independently evaluated
Interview Culture
Interviewing at UCSF Health feels distinctly academic, mission-driven, and deliberate.
What UCSF Health Looks For
- Genuine alignment with UCSF's tripartite mission of patient care, research, and education. Candidates who articulate why an academic medical center matters to them — and who show comfort working alongside medical students, residents, fellows, and trainees — perform substantially better than those who treat UCSF as just another hospital job.
- Demonstrable commitment to equity, anti-racism, and serving diverse and underserved patient populations. UCSF is explicit about its anti-racism initiative and its long-standing partnership with Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the city's public safety-net hospital. Concrete examples of culturally responsive care, work with marginalized communities, language access, or DEI leadership are evaluated rigorously.
- Clinical or scientific excellence backed by evidence. UCSF expects candidates to handle complexity — quaternary care patients, NIH-funded laboratories, multidisciplinary teams. Specialty certifications, peer-reviewed publications, funded grants, awards, and demonstrable mastery of evidence-based practice signal that you can operate at the institution's standard.
- PRIDE values in action — Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Diversity, and Excellence. These five values appear in interview rubrics and performance evaluations. Examples drawn from real situations carry more weight than declarations.
- Interprofessional collaboration and humility. UCSF teams are multidisciplinary by design — physicians, nurses, advanced practice providers, pharmacists, social workers, case managers, therapists, technologists, researchers, and administrators all contribute. Candidates who operate ego-free, respect every role on the team, and credit colleagues openly stand out.
- Comfort with ambiguity, change, and continuous learning. Academic medicine evolves rapidly, and UCSF is at the frontier — adopting new therapies, integrating genomics into clinical care, deploying AI in clinical and operational workflows, and continuously redesigning models of care. The institution favors candidates who learn fast, ask good questions, and contribute to improvement work.
- Safety, quality, and high-reliability orientation. UCSF Health is a Magnet-designated organization with a strong patient safety culture. Familiarity with high-reliability principles, just culture, root cause analysis, lean methodologies, and quality improvement tools (PDSA cycles, Six Sigma, IHI frameworks) is highly valued, especially for nursing leadership, quality, and operations roles.
- Resilience and self-care in a demanding environment. UCSF cares for the most complex, often the sickest patients in Northern California, and the work is emotionally and physically intense. Interviewers look for candidates who recognize the toll of clinical work, articulate their own coping strategies, and contribute to team well-being rather than burning out silently.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Open Positions
UCSF Health currently has 10 open positions.
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