Director, Data Scientist - Clinical AI

Posted date Sep. 09, 2026
Contract type Full time
Job ID R\-259736

Why choose AstraZeneca Spain?
---------------------------------

AstraZeneca Spain is a rising force in our global business. With headquarters in Madrid and our global hub in Barcelona, we’ve become an important international centre of excellence in the fight against critical disease. Boasting vibrant universities and business schools, the Barcelona ecosystem is a place where scientists can thrive. We attract a diverse workforce from across the globe, shining a beacon for innovation in a country that’s committed to clinical development.

We invite you to bring your talents to Barcelona where our respiratory medicine R\&D and Global Marketing centre offers opportunities in R\&D, IT, Commercial and HR. Or join us in Madrid and shape our growth in our BUs (Respiratory, Oncology \& CVRM ), and a range of Corporate functions. Additionally, you can find sales roles throughout the country. Together, we’re contributing to a world\-leading pipeline of therapeutics and delivering life\-changing medicines to patients.

Who do we look for?
-----------------------

Calling all tech innovators, ownership takers, challenge seekers and proactive collaborators. At AstraZeneca Spain, breakthroughs born in the lab become transformative medicine for the world's most complex diseases. Alongside technical expertise, colleagues have the resilience, energy and collaborative mindset to change lanes, work with different teams and start projects from scratch.

Here, diverse minds and bold disruptors can meaningfully impact the future of healthcare using cutting\-edge technology. Whether you join us in Madrid or Barcelona, you can make a tangible impact within a global biopharmaceutical company that invests in your future. Join a talented global team that's powering AstraZeneca to better serve patients every day.

Success Profile
-------------------

Ready to make an impact in your career? If you're passionate, growth\-orientated and a true team player, we'll help you succeed. Here are some of the skills and capabilities we look for.

Diverse collaborators

This is a speak\-up culture that values collaboration. You’ll proactively bring your unique perspectives, experiences and skills to the table and seek the same from others. With our international team composition and the need for fast\-paced collaboration, you’ll always be building new connections with colleagues.

Cutting\-edge innovators

When you join us, you’ll be part of a team that embraces digital technology and data to transform the way we work and the work we do. Every day, you’ll help make history, empowered to ignite your creativity and build something enduring.

Resilient trailblazers

Here, the answers aren’t always available. So, you’ll need to bring a fearless, self\-starter mindset to navigate uncharted territories. You’ll harness your ceaseless energy to discover and make the necessary connections with colleagues to shape the future and achieve maximum impact.

Agile movers

Seize ownership and excel with autonomy to enjoy the constant rush of ground\-breaking discovery. Your ability to anticipate sudden shifts and adapt swiftly will prove critical as you make your mark in an environment that rewards initiative and resilience.

Responsibilities
--------------------

Job ID R\-259736 Date posted 09/09/2026
Location: Barcelona \- Spain or Cambridge \- UK (3 days in\-office requirement)

About AstraZeneca and AISI

At AstraZeneca, technology and science meet to change what is possible for patients. We are building a connected, end\-to\-end Enterprise AI engine — uniting data foundations, AI technology, process reinvention, and business\-facing AI to accelerate results across the whole value chain. Success depends on being exceptional connectors: you will actively leverage existing capabilities, celebrate and promote reuse, export breakthrough ideas across geographies and functions, and obsess over scaling impact rather than building in isolation.

AI Science \& Innovation (AISI) sits at the centre of AstraZeneca's R\&D AI transformation. Our remit is to build, buy, and deliver the AI models and agents that change pipeline outcomes across discovery, translational science, biomarkers, and clinical development.

Within AISI, the Clinical AI teams are building world\-class AI capability to accelerate the design, conduct, and analysis of clinical trials across our BioPharmaceuticals pipelines — spanning both early and late phase programmes. We partner closely with clinical development, regulatory, and biometrics teams to bring better treatments to patients faster, while adhering to the highest evidentiary standards.

The Opportunity

Bringing new treatments to patients demands scientific excellence at every stage of development. In the Clinical AI team, we focus on one of the most data\-rich and decision\-intensive parts of that journey: clinical development. Trial design, patient selection, dose optimisation, biomarker strategy, and safety evaluation each represent genuine opportunities where AI and machine learning can add rigour, speed, and precision — not as a replacement for clinical and statistical expertise, but as a powerful complement to it. We hold ourselves to measurable standards of improvement, and we build methods that can be evaluated, reproduced, and trusted in regulatory settings.

You will work across the enterprise to define and deliver on AstraZeneca's most pressing clinical development questions — leading cross\-functional teams spanning the key BioPharmaceuticals disease areas of cardiovascular, renal, metabolic disease, respiratory, immunology and cell\-therapy. You and the team will develop reusable methods and enterprise\-scale approaches that measurably advance the late\-stage drug pipeline. This is a high\-visibility opportunity to shape how AstraZeneca does AI for BioPharmaceuticals clinical development — from methodology standards to external scientific influence.

AI for clinical development is a field in motion. Foundation models, agentic systems, and causal AI are advancing rapidly, and the regulatory and methodological frameworks around them are evolving in parallel. As a Director, Data Scientist, you will define and drive the AI methodology agenda for one or more programmes within Clinical AI, leading by scientific influence and matrix coordination rather than through a formal hierarchy. You will be the scientific authority that study teams, biometrics, and regulatory colleagues turn to — and AstraZeneca's voice externally at the critical moment when the rules of the road for AI in clinical trials are being written.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and drive the AI methodology roadmap for assigned Clinical AI programmes, spanning early and late phase clinical development, and aligning AI/ML priorities with clinical and business objectives.


• Lead, by matrix influence and scientific authority, the delivery of the most complex and high\-stakes AI projects — from problem definition and methodology selection through validation, regulatory alignment, and scaled adoption across the enterprise.


• Develop and govern reusable, enterprise\-grade AI methods and evaluation frameworks for clinical trial settings, including innovative trial design support, dose optimisation, biomarker discovery, digital twins, predictive and prognostic modelling, and safety and efficacy signal detection.


• Champion data\-centric AI practices at programme level: govern the acquisition, curation, and quality control of datasets for model training, post\-training, benchmarking, and evaluation across clinical and regulatory settings.


• Partner with Clinical Development, Biometrics, Regulatory, and Study Teams to embed AI strategy and validated solutions into study design and decision\-making at programme level.


• Shape the AI evidence component for regulatory submission packages; act as the scientific and methodological voice in regulatory engagements involving AI/ML methods or innovative trial designs (FDA, EMA, MHRA).


• Evaluate and champion cutting\-edge AI methodologies — including foundation models, agentic AI systems, generative patient models, multimodal learning, Bayesian inference, causal inference, and model calibration and domain adaptation — proposing fit\-for\-purpose approaches with robust evaluation criteria and risk assessment.


• Establish and maintain external collaborations with academic institutions, technology partners, and industry consortia to access novel capabilities and advance the scientific agenda.


• Represent AstraZeneca at scientific conferences, standards bodies, and peer\-reviewed venues; contribute first\- or last\-author publications in leading ML and clinical AI journals.


• Serve as a technical mentor and thought partner for Associate Directors and Senior Data Scientists within the Clinical AI team; promote scientific rigour, reuse, and a culture of learning in public.


• Contribute to the broader AISI AI for Clinical Development strategy, including cross\-functional ways of working, tooling governance, and methodology standards.

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Mathematics, Biomedical Informatics, Computational Biology, or a closely related quantitative discipline — with a strong, hands\-on computational track record.


• 4–8 years of post\-PhD experience in AI and machine learning method development, with demonstrated and sustained impact in clinical, biomedical, or drug development settings (e.g. models delivered, first\-author publications, patents, SaMD filings, open\-source projects).


• Deep experience, knowledge, and understanding of one or more fields of biology, with hands\-on experience working with biological data such as molecular (DNA, RNA, protein), imaging (radiology, microscopy), or clinical text (EHR, clinical

Este anuncio proviene de Indeed. Ver anuncio original ↗