Senior Expert II (Biomedical AI Methods Expert

This job is with Novartis, an inclusive employer and a member of myGwork – the largest global platform for the LGBTQ+ business community. Please do not contact the recruiter directly.

Summary

Novartis has embraced a bold strategy to drive a company-wide digital transformation. Our objective is to position Novartis as an industry leader by proactively adopting digital technologies that foster innovative approaches to hasten drug discovery and development. By utilizing both internal and external R&D data with the power of data science, predictive models, generative AI, and machine learning, our objective is to identify new targets, create more effective therapeutic molecules, better predict drug pharmacokinetics and safety risks, refine clinical trial design, and significantly shorten development cycles. The AICS team leads BR in exploring and applying advanced AI and ML methodologies to generate novel drug discovery insights, and to speed and improve drug discovery efficiency whilst focusing on patients' needs.

AICS partners with drug discovery teams, raises the level of AI expertise across Biomedical Research (BR) and ensures that BR science keeps up with the rapidly evolving ecosystem of AI technologies by connecting with AI leaders in academia and industry.

This role within the AI Methods group of AICS will be tasked with critical assessment of the model landscape, identifying opportunities for methodological innovation, and building the right AI approaches, algorithms, models and workflows to maximize impact on key domains areas of biomedical research that will potentially lead to developing better drugs, faster.

About the Role

Key Responsibilities :

Work with a team of AI researchers, data scientists and SMEs with core domain expertise to develop and deliver focused, robust, performant AI algorithms and solutions to accelerate drug discovery.

Stay informed about the latest AI methods, increase understanding of the problem domain, and ask detailed questions to identify potential areas for innovation in AI across the drug discovery pipeline.

Promote awareness of advancements in AI methods for addressing key research questions within biomedical research.

Fluently adopt Engineering and Product Development resources to ensure the adoption of AI solutions.

Help position AI-aided drug discovery contributions to deliver and support progress of BR's portfolio, enable new kinds of therapeutic discoveries, shorten cycle times, and increase efficiency.

Collaboration & partnership

A respectful, team-player attitude is an absolute must.

Regularly communicate, engage, align with AICS teams, broader data science community, and senior scientists.

Initiate and lead key high-value internal collaborations across BR.

Help design translatable metrics for AI models that will lead to tangible impact in collaboration with BR DAs and FAs.

Collaborate cross-functionally to translate model outputs into actionable hypotheses and guide experimental design.

Essential Requirements :

A deep curiosity and passion for biomedical sciences driven therapeutic discovery.

A deep passion for understanding and explaining the technical concepts underlying ML approaches.

4+ years of significant experience in innovation, development, deployment and continuous support of Machine Learning and modeling.

Wide exposure to representation learning, deep generative modeling, probabilistic reasoning, and explainability approaches.

Strong hands-on coding proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks.

Strong understanding and experience in using version control systems for developing software (e.g. GitHub, git, subversion, bitbucket, etc.).

Experience in large-scale model training, distributed computation, and foundation model adaptation.

Publications, patents, or open-source contributions that demonstrate machine learning innovation and expertise.

Experience with applying ML to one or more functional areas of core drug discovery like target identification, computational chemistry, protein structure modelling and design or translational medicine is a plus.

Expertise in bringing advanced analytics insights and actions to a large research organization

Passion for understanding emerging technologies with pragmatic insight into where those technologies can be integrated into business solutions

Ability to balance requirements, manage expectations, and drive effective results using a proactive can-do attitude towards identifying and resolving issues, as well as a proven ability to work exceptionally well within complex matrixed teams.

Relevant areas of desired expertise

Transformer architectures (Text, Vision, DNA / amino-acid sequences, Gene expression vectors); Long-context transformers and efficient attention mechanisms; diffusion models; flow matching; energy-based models; multimodal architectures; graph neural networks; geometric deep learning; Bayesian optimization; Reinforcement learning; Active learning; Variational Inference; Self-supervised learning; Contrastive learning; Domain adaption; Test-time adaptation

Novartis Compensation Summary :

The salary for this position is expected to range between $132,300 and $245,700 per year.

The final salary offered is determined based on factors like, but not limited to, relevant skills and experience, and upon joining Novartis will be reviewed periodically. Novartis may

change the published salary range based on company and market factors.

Your compensation will include a performance-based cash incentive and, depending on the level of the role, eligibility to be considered for annual equity awards.

US-based eligible employees will receive a comprehensive benefits package that includes health, life and disability benefits, a 401(k) with company contribution and match, and

a variety of other benefits. In addition, employees are eligible for a generous time off package including vacation, personal days, holidays and other leaves.

To learn more about the culture, rewards and benefits we offer our people click here

Why Novartis :

Helping people with disease and their families takes more than innovative science. It takes a community of smart, passionate people like you. Collaborating, supporting and inspiring each other. Combining to achieve breakthroughs that change patients' lives. Ready to create a brighter future together? https : / / www.novartis.com / about / strategy / people-and-culture

Benefits and Rewards :

Read our handbook to learn about all the ways we'll help you thrive personally and professionally : https : / / www.novartis.com / careers / benefits-rewards

EEO Statement :

The Novartis Group of Companies are Equal Opportunity Employers. We do not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Accessibility & Reasonable Accommodations

The Novartis Group of Companies are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or to perform the essential functions of a position, please send an e-mail to [email protected] or call +1(877)395-2339 and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. Please include the job requisition number in your message.

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