Principal Scientist, Data Science

About the role

J&J Innovative Medicine – Data, Data Science, and AI - Global Development (DDSAI GD) is recruiting a Principal Scientist.

Responsibilities

• Use RWD to quantify disease prevalence, care pathways, and the impact of inclusion/exclusion criteria; produce feasibility scoring across geographies, sites, and subpopulations.
• Assess RWD-feasible endpoints and proxies; evaluate availability, completeness, quality, and signal-to-noise to guide protocol design choices.
• Create RWD-based cohorts and external/synthetic controls to benchmark protocol decisions and stress-test sample-size/timeline assumptions.
• Develop ML and multi-objective optimization solutions primarily powered by RWD to surface trade-offs (speed, quality, cost, diversity) and recommend design and operational scenarios informed by real-world care patterns.
• Construct RWD-calibrated stochastic simulations of patient journeys to forecast timeline sensitivities and completion risk; provide RWD features, calibration sets, and feasibility constraints to the partner team’s enrollment/screen-failure/retention models.
• Adapt LLMs/GenAI for structured extraction from RWD artifacts (structured and unstructured EHR, notes, radiology/pathology reports, claims, registries); harmonize concepts to standard vocabularies to support eligibility criteria evaluation and schedule-of-activities insights grounded in real-world practice.
• Clearly communicate RWD-based assumptions, methods, and results to clinical, operational, and leadership stakeholders; coach and mentor colleagues on RWD methodologies, pipelines, and best practices.

Requirements

• A Ph.D. degree in quantitative discipline (e.g., computer science, electrical and computer engineering, biostatistics, health economics, biomedical informatics, applied mathematics, or similar), 5+ years delivering ML/NLP/GenAI and multi-objective optimization solutions with primary reliance on RWD (EHR, claims, registries, digital health), including collaboration with operations analytics teams.
• Hands-on experience with multimodal RWD (structured + unstructured) predictive modeling and stochastic simulations for feasibility and time series scenario forecasting.
• Demonstrated ability to construct, validate, and deploy models from RWD to inform trial feasibility, endpoint selection, eligibility criteria effects, and external control design.
• Experience building optimization engines (e.g., evolutionary algorithms, reinforcement learning, mixed integer linear programming) using RWD derived signals to navigate complex tradeoffs.
• Proficiency in MLOps (e.g., MLflow, Kedro), Git, and CI/CD; strong programming skills in Python and SQL; familiarity with DSPy/LangChain, pymoo, scikit learn, XGBoost, Optuna, PyMC.
• Familiarity with healthcare privacy/compliance, deidentification practices, and RWD data quality management; ability to integrate outputs from operational systems/models when needed while keeping the analytical core RWD driven.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated expertise applying RWD methods to inform trial design: target trial emulation, propensity weighting/matching, and survival/time-to-event analyses for endpoint feasibility and external/synthetic controls.
• Proven collaboration with operations analytics teams by supplying RWD-derived cohorts, features, and feasibility evidence that improved enrollment forecasting, site selection, and diversity goals.

Skills

• Advanced Analytics
• Coaching
• Critical Thinking
• Data Analysis
• Data Privacy Standards
• Data Quality
• Data Reporting
• Data Savvy
• Data Science
• Data Visualization
• Digital Fluency
• Econometric Models
• Organizing
• Process Improvements
• Strategic Thinking
• Technical Credibility
• Workflow Analysis

Pay

The anticipated base pay range for this position is: $117,000.00 - $201,250.00

Benefits

• Consolidated Retirement Plan (pension)
• Savings Plan (401(k))
• Vacation – 120 hours per calendar year
• Sick time – 40 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Colorado – 48 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Washington – 56 hours per calendar year
• Holiday pay, including Floating Holidays – 13 days per calendar year
• Work, Personal and Family Time – up to 40 hours per calendar year
• Bereavement Leave – 240 hours for an immediate family member: 40 hours for an extended family member per calendar year
• Caregiver Leave – 80 hours in a 52-week rolling period
• Volunteer Leave – 32 hours per calendar year
• Military Spouse Time-Off – 80 hours per calendar year