Senior Scientist, Scientific Workflows & Agentic Cheminformatics

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine; Beerse; On-site; EUR 73,000 - 115,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Vacation days

Parental leave

Job summary

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine in Belgium is seeking a Senior Scientist to design, prototype, and validate agent-enabled discovery workflows in Cheminformatics. You will lead cross-functional teams across ISD/CADD, biology, and data science to deliver robust workflows and reusable capabilities for drug discovery.

The role emphasizes scientific ownership, collaboration with platform engineers, and delivering measurable value while maintaining global collaboration and international travel

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent substantial experience in cheminformatics, computational chemistry, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, or a related discipline.
• Strong understanding of compound design and predictive models with the ability to connect scientific needs across disciplines within project or capability teams.
• Strong Python programming skills and experience developing automated workflows, pipelines, or scientific applications to explore scientific questions and create practical proof-of-concept solutions.
• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development approaches to build reliable scientific software or automated workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently in an emerging area, translate scientific needs into practical solutions, and collaborate effectively across scientific, data science, and technology teams.
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally up to 10% of the time.

Responsibilities

• Design scientifically meaningful use cases, reference datasets, and success criteria that enable rigorous evaluation.
• Translate complex scientific questions into well-defined workflows that make evidence, assumptions, decisions, and points requiring expert judgment explicit, and contribute reusable approaches where appropriate.
• 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.
• Lead the scientific design, prototyping, and validation of assigned agent-enabled discovery workflows, and collaborate with data science and platform engineering teams from an early stage by contributing scientific requirements, evidence, and user feedback for production implementation, security, and sustained operation.

Skills

Python programming

AI-assisted development

Drug discovery knowledge

Independent work

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Education

PhD in cheminformatics / computational chemistry / medicinal chemistry

Tools

Python

Airflow

Git

CI/CD

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.

Job Function

Data Analytics & Computational Sciences

Job Sub Function

Data Science

Job Category

Scientific/Technology

All Job Posting Locations

Beerse, Antwerp, Belgium; Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America; La Jolla, California, United States of America; Madrid, Spain; Spring House, Pennsylvania, United States of America; Toledo, Spain

Job Description

Senior Scientist, Scientific Workflows & Agentic Cheminformatics

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.

We are seeking a talented computational Senior Scientist in Cheminformatics development, joining our cutting-edge In Silico Discovery department within Therapeutics Discovery at J&J.

A discovery scientist who applies cheminformatics and emerging agentic approaches to important scientific questions, develops and validates new workflows, and helps make useful capabilities accessible to scientists through familiar discovery environments.

The primary location for this role is Belgium. Spain and the East & West coast of America will be considered also.

Mission

Design, prototype, and validate agent-enabled workflows for defined high-value discovery questions or use cases. Generate the scientific evidence, user feedback, and implementation requirements needed to advance successful concepts toward broader use in partnership with project, data science, and platform teams.

Core Responsibilities

• Build trusted partnerships with medicinal chemists, In Silico Discovery (ISD) / CADD scientists, biologists, DMPK scientists, and data scientists to understand decision workflows and identify valuable opportunities within projects or defined discovery areas.
• Translate complex scientific questions into well-defined workflows that make evidence, assumptions, decisions, and points requiring expert judgment explicit, and contribute reusable approaches where appropriate.
• 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.
• Take scientific and technical ownership of defined agentic prototypes or workstreams, set fit-for-purpose success measures, make informed trade-offs, and ensure that the work addresses meaningful discovery needs and delivers measurable value.
• Support adoption of agentic capabilities by integrating them into familiar scientific environments and working directly with users through project partnerships, training, and feedback.
• Lead the scientific design, prototyping, and validation of assigned agent-enabled discovery workflows, and collaborate with data science and platform engineering teams from an early stage by contributing scientific requirements, evidence, and user feedback for production implementation, security, and sustained operation. Help translate successful project solutions into reusable capabilities aligned with shared architectures.

Required Skills

• PhD or equivalent substantial experience in cheminformatics, computational chemistry, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, or a related discipline, with strong scientific expertise relevant to drug discovery.
• Strong understanding of compound design and predictive models with the ability to connect scientific needs across disciplines within project or capability teams.
• Strong Python programming skills and experience developing automated workflows, pipelines, or scientific applications to explore scientific questions and create practical proof-of-concept solutions.
• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development approaches to build reliable scientific software or automated workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently in an emerging area, translate scientific needs into practical solutions, and collaborate effectively across scientific, data science, and technology teams.
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally up to 10% of the time.

Preferred Skills

• Experience designing and evaluating end-to-end agent-enabled scientific workflows or multi-agent solutions is preferred.
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration and sound software development practices, including version control, testing, and continuous integration and delivery.
• Strong knowledge of and hands‑on experience with public and commercial bioactivity and chemogenomics databases.

Additional Preferred Skills

• Advanced Analytics, Business Intelligence (BI), Coaching, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Data Analysis, Database Management, Data Privacy Standards, Data Reporting, Data Savvy, Data Science, Data Visualization, Econometric Models, Process Improvements, Technical Credibility, Technologically Savvy, Workflow Analysis

The Anticipated Base Pay Range For This Position Is

€72,500.00 - €115,230.00

Benefits

In addition to base pay, we offer the following benefits*: an annual bonus with set target (% of pay) depending on pay grade / location, where the actual amount is based on the employees’ and companies’ performance of the previous calendar year, or sales commissions. Moreover, we offer vacation days, parental leave for a minimum of 12 weeks, bereavement leave, caregiver leave, volunteer leave, well-being reimbursement, programs for financial, physical and mental health. We also offer service anniversary and recognition awards, and subject to the terms of their respective plans, employees - and in some location’s eligible dependents - can participate in several insurance plans. For more information, visit Employee benefits | Supporting well‑being & career growth | Johnson & Johnson Careers.

This is for informative purposes only. Amounts and actual benefits may vary by location and are subject to change.