Principal Scientist, Data Science (Translational Knowledge Engineering)

Position Summary

The Principal Translational Knowledge Architect & Graph Lead will be responsible for designing and implementing the semantic and knowledge architecture that enables AI-driven reasoning across the drug discovery and development lifecycle. This role will serve as the scientific and technical lead for ontology development, knowledge graph design, semantic interoperability, and AI-ready knowledge representation. Working at the intersection of translational science, patient safety, biomedical informatics, and artificial intelligence, this individual will help establish the semantic foundation required to connect discovery biology, preclinical safety, clinical development, real-world evidence, and post-marketing safety into a unified reasoning framework. The successful candidate will partner closely with scientists, safety experts, data scientists, AI engineers, and platform teams to create knowledge assets that support GraphRAG, agentic AI, scientific reasoning, and next-generation translational intelligence capabilities.

Mission

Build the semantic foundation that enables AI systems to reason across discovery, preclinical, clinical, and post-marketing domains while preserving scientific meaning, provenance, and translational fidelity.

Key Responsibilities

• Semantic Architecture & Knowledge Modeling
  • Design and maintain enterprise knowledge models spanning: discovery biology, toxicology, safety pharmacology, pathology, clinical development, pharmacovigilance, and real-world evidence
  • Develop semantic frameworks that support translational reasoning across the R&D lifecycle
  • Create conceptual, logical, and physical knowledge models supporting AI-enabled scientific discovery
• Ontology Engineering & Governance
  • Lead ontology strategy, development, governance, and lifecycle management
  • Curate and extend biomedical ontologies supporting translational safety and efficacy use cases
  • Establish ontology governance processes, quality standards, and semantic review procedures
  • Ensure semantic consistency, provenance, traceability, and FAIR data principles
• Knowledge Graph & Reasoning Infrastructure
  • Design RDF-based knowledge graph architectures and related semantic technologies
  • Develop semantic mappings, inference rules, and reasoning frameworks supporting scientific decision-making
  • Define knowledge representations enabling GraphRAG, semantic retrieval, AI agents, and reasoning systems
  • Establish semantic interoperability across heterogeneous data sources and standards
• Translational Data Harmonization
  • Develop semantic bridges across major industry standards and ontologies, including: SEND, SDTM, ADaM, MedDRA, HPO, MONDO, SNOMED CT, FHIR, OMO, Cell Ontology, Protein Ontology
  • Enable AI systems to traverse translational boundaries while preserving biological and clinical context
• Scientific & Cross-Functional Leadership
  • Partner with stakeholders across Discovery, Preclinical Safety, Clinical Development, Pharmacovigilance, Data Science, and Digital Health
  • Collaborate with engineering teams responsible for data products, pipelines, and AI platforms
  • Influence enterprise semantic strategy and represent the organization in external standards and ontology communities when appropriate

Required Qualifications

Education: PhD or Master's degree in Biomedical Informatics, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Computer Science, Information Science, Knowledge Engineering, or related scientific discipline.

Experience:

• 5+ years of experience in biomedical informatics, semantic technologies, knowledge engineering, or scientific data architecture
• Demonstrated experience designing ontology-driven knowledge systems in life sciences, healthcare, or pharmaceutical R&D environments
• Experience working across multiple phases of drug discovery and development

Technical Expertise:

• Deep expertise in ontology development and governance, knowledge representation, RDF, OWL, SHACL, SPARQL, and Semantic Web technologies
• Strong experience with enterprise ontology management platforms, RDF graph architectures, semantic APIs, and FAIR data principles

Domain Knowledge: Strong familiarity with one or more of translational science, toxicology, safety pharmacology, clinical development, pharmacovigilance, regulatory data standards, and experience working with SEND, SDTM, ADaM, MedDRA, HPO, MONDO, FHIR, or OMO.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building semantic foundations for AI, GraphRAG, agentic AI, or scientific reasoning systems
• Familiarity with LLM-based retrieval and reasoning architectures
• Experience supporting translational safety, efficacy, biomarker, or mechanistic reasoning use cases
• Contributions to ontology standards, open-source biomedical ontologies, or scientific knowledge graph initiatives

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic thinker capable of translating scientific challenges into scalable knowledge architectures
• Strong communicator who can engage effectively with scientists, clinicians, data scientists, engineers, and senior leadership
• Ability to operate in ambiguous, highly cross-functional environments
• Passion for advancing AI-enabled drug discovery and development through semantic and knowledge-driven approaches

Pay & Benefits

Anticipated base pay range: $117,000.00 - $201,250.00

Additional compensation: This position is eligible to participate in the Company's long-term incentive program.

Retirement: Subject to the terms of their respective plans, employees are eligible to participate in the Company's consolidated retirement plan (pension) and savings plan (401(k)).

Time off benefits (subject to terms of respective policies and date of hire):

• Vacation – 120 hours per calendar year
• Sick time – 40 hours per calendar year (48 hours for Colorado residents; 56 hours for Washington residents)
• Holiday pay, including Floating Holidays – 13 days per calendar year
• Work, Personal and Family Time – up to 40 hours per calendar year
• Parental Leave – 480 hours within one year of birth/adoption/foster care of a child
• Bereavement Leave – 240 hours for immediate family; 40 hours for extended family 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

For additional general information on Company benefits, please go to: https://www.careers.jnj.com/employee-benefits