Principal Scientist, Scientific Workflows & Agentic Cheminformatics - BE

Johnson Johnson; Antwerpen; On-site; EUR 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine in Beerse, Belgium, seeks a Principal Scientist to lead agentic workflows and cheminformatics within our In Silico Drug Discovery team. The role may be based in Spring House, PA, or Cambridge, MA, with some travel and no remote option.

You will guide design, prototyping, and validation of agent-enabled workflows, partner with data science and platform engineering, and drive adoption of these capabilities across discovery functions to accelerate medicines.

Responsibilities

• Build trusted partnerships with medicinal chemists, CADD scientists, biologists, DMPK scientists, data scientists, and scientific leaders to understand decision workflows and identify opportunities with impact across projects or discovery areas.
• Shape and prioritize a portfolio of scientific questions and decision points where agentic approaches can bring together data, models, and expert knowledge to improve discovery speed and quality.
• Define robust and reusable approaches for translating complex scientific questions into workflows that make evidence, assumptions, decisions, and points requiring expert judgment explicit.
• Develop and test agentic prototypes in realistic discovery settings, combining scientific expertise with relevant data, predictive models, computational methods, and tools that agents can select and coordinate.
• Provide scientific and technical leadership across a portfolio of agentic prototypes, set priorities and success measures, guide trade-off decisions, and ensure value delivery across discovery functions.

Skills

Scientific leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Agentic workflows

Data analysis

Job description

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at jnj.com .

As guided by Our Credo, Johnson & Johnson is responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. We provide an inclusive work environment where each person is considered as an individual. At Johnson & Johnson, we respect the diversity and dignity of our employees and recognize their merit.

Job Function

Data Analytics & Computational Sciences

Job Sub Function

Data Science

Job Category

Scientific/Technology

All Job Posting Locations

Turnhout, Antwerp, Belgium

Job Description

Our expertise in Innovative Medicine is informed and inspired by patients, whose insights fuel our science-based advancements. Visionaries like you work on teams that save lives by developing the medicines of tomorrow.

Join us in developing treatments, finding cures, and pioneering the path from lab to life while championing patients every step of the way.

Learn more at https://www.jnj.com/innovative-medicine

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine is recruiting for a Principal Scientist, Scientific Workflows & Agentic Cheminformatics to join our In Silico Drug Discovery team. This position will be located in either Spring House, PA; or Cambridge, MA and may require some travel as needed (no remote option). Consideration may be given for candidates located in Beerse, Belgium.

Please note that this role is available across multiple countries and may be posted under different requisition numbers to comply with local requirements. While you are welcome to apply to any or all of the postings, we recommend focusing on the specific country(s) that align with your preferred location(s):

USA - Requisition Number: R-102947

Belgium - Requisition Number: R-104669

The Principal Scientist is a scientific leader who identifies how agentic approaches can transform cheminformatics and discovery practice, rapidly prototypes and validates new scientific workflows, and enables their adoption by scientists through familiar discovery environments.

Mission

The Principal Scientist will lead the identification, scientific design, prototyping, and validation of agent-enabled workflows that address high-value discovery questions across multiple use cases or discovery areas. This individual will also establish the scientific evidence, adoption model, and partnerships needed to advance promising concepts into broadly used capabilities.

Core responsibilities

• Build trusted partnerships with medicinal chemists, CADD scientists, biologists, DMPK scientists, data scientists, and scientific leaders to understand decision workflows and identify opportunities with impact across projects or discovery areas.
• Shape and prioritize a portfolio of scientific questions and decision points where agentic approaches can bring together data, models, and expert knowledge to improve the quality or speed of discovery.
• Define robust and reusable approaches for translating complex scientific questions into workflows that make evidence, assumptions, decisions, and points requiring expert judgment explicit.
• Design scientifically meaningful use cases, reference datasets, and success criteria that enable rigorous evaluation.
• Evaluate agent behavior and outputs for scientific validity, reproducibility, uncertainty, appropriate tool use, robustness across scenarios, and relevance to discovery decisions.
• Capture the scientific insights gained from early applications and use them to define which approaches merit further development and broader adoption.
• Develop and test agentic prototypes in realistic discovery settings, combining scientific expertise with relevant data, predictive models, computational or laboratory methods, and tools that agents can select and coordinate to address a scientific objective.
• Provide scientific and technical leadership across a portfolio of agentic prototypes, set priorities and success measures, guide trade-off decisions, and ensure that the work addresses meaningful discovery needs and delivers measurable value.
• Drive broader adoption of agentic capabilities by integrating them into familiar scientific environments, establishing effective patterns for human-agent collaboration, and building communities of practice across discovery functions.
• Lead the scientific design, prototyping, and validation of agent-enabled discovery workflows, and partner with data science and platform engineering teams from an early stage on the underlying AI architecture, production implementation, security, and sustained operation. Translate scient