Research Principal, Real World Evidence

About the Role

A scientific and strategic contributor with broad expertise and/or unique knowledge in a specific area, capable of achieving objectives in creative and effective ways. This role involves managing multiple projects within a client or across several clients, acting as the primary point of contact for engagements, and developing mutually beneficial partnerships. The successful candidate will work within a growing team of RWE statisticians, epidemiologists, and health economists, collaborating with subject matter experts across Cytel to generate impactful real-world evidence for faster patient access to effective treatments, with a focus on real-world comparative effectiveness research (trial emulation, external control arms). The role also includes contributing to external dissemination activities and research innovation strategy within the RWE team.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain successful long-term relationships with clients, including maintaining an existing network of client relationships.
• Network with key contacts outside your area of expertise and work closely with the business development team to support client work as a subject matter expert or senior lead.
• Routinely identify opportunities for follow-on work.
• Manage projects to ensure specified deliverables are developed on budget and undergo appropriate review and sign-off.
• Act as a technical lead and support the development of code for complex methods.
• Ensure the successful integration of the team on projects, quality of deliverables, and the project team’s efficiency, including mentoring and training junior staff.
• Support junior staff in meeting the technical aspects of their career development goals.
• Provide leadership or significant contributions to scientific processes involved with client deliverables (e.g., report templates, analysis plans, development of internal software/tools).
• Independently identify relevant methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for obtaining results.
• Stay abreast of regulatory, reimbursement, and other industry requirements and guidelines, including active participation in scientific conferences and symposia.
• Identify and communicate recruitment needs, and lead or participate in hiring and training consultants as requested.
• Ensure company and business unit policies, standards, and procedures are met.
• Serve as a thought leader through external engagement (conferences, publications, seminars) and internal training and upskilling of junior staff.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Data Science, Mathematics, or other relevant scientific field. PhD highly desirable.
• 12-15 years of experience in the RWE or health research, academic, or consulting environment. Additional experience may be required depending on the focus area.

Skills

• Thorough understanding of the biopharmaceutical R&D process combined with business acumen.
• Comfortable presenting and interfacing with senior executives within client companies.
• Strong technical writing, oral communication, and presentation skills, with excellent command of the English language.
• Curious, collaborative, entrepreneurial, and self-motivated, with the ability to work effectively in a demanding, challenging, and rapidly changing environment.
• Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to gain respect and influence management teams, board members, customers, and personnel at all levels.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to execute in complex situations at the tactical level.
• Subject matter expertise in causal inference methods for comparative effectiveness studies, including target trial emulation and/or developing real-world external control arms for clinical trials.
• Extensive experience with large healthcare real-world databases (electronic health records, claims databases).
• Strong programming skills in R.
• Experience, vision, creativity, scope, integrity, leadership skills, prestige, and intellect to enhance the existing organization and contribute to the strategic direction of Cytel.
• Experience with AI/ML methods.
• Experience with Bayesian statistical methods.