Data Science Specialist (Senior Product Lead)

University Health Network; Toronto; On-site; CAD 89,000 - 134,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive offer packages

HOOPP pension plan

Transit access

Flexible work environment

Development opportunities

Job summary

University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto invites an experienced Senior Leader to drive software product development for the AIRCHECK platform within the Structural Genomics Consortium. You will lead a multidisciplinary team, define roadmaps, implement agile processes, and work with AI/ML and cloud infrastructure to deliver scalable solutions that support open science in drug discovery.

The role requires strong leadership, excellent communication, and the ability to translate scientific goals

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in a technical field or equivalent industry experience.
• Experience leading software/product initiatives with multidisciplinary teams.
• Strong knowledge of agile development, roadmaps, and release management.

Responsibilities

• Lead software product roadmap planning and execution across the AIRCHECK platform.
• Manage a multidisciplinary team of developers, data engineers, and AI/ML scientists.
• Establish and maintain product development processes, including agile workflows and milestones.
• Translate scientific objectives into concrete technical plans and deliverables.
• Collaborate with leadership to align with SGC and open science needs.
• Shape a scalable, reliable platform enabling open sharing of chemical data and AI resources.

Skills

Software leadership

Agile

Team coordination

Stakeholder management

Cloud platforms

AI/ML familiarity

Education

Master's or PhD

Equivalent industry experience

Tools

Google Cloud Platform

Azure

AWS

Job description

UHN is Canada’s #1 hospital and the world’s #1 publicly funded hospital. With 10 sites and more than 44,000 TeamUHN members, UHN consists of Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, The Michener Institute of Education and West Park Healthcare Centre. As Canada's top research hospital, the scope of biomedical research and complexity of cases at UHN have made it a national and international source for discovery, education and patient care. UHN has the largest hospital-based research program in Canada, with major research in neurosciences, cardiology, transplantation, oncology, surgical innovation, infectious diseases, genomic medicine and rehabilitation medicine. UHN is a research hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto.

UHN’s vision is to build A Healthier World and it’s only because of the talented and dedicated people who work here that we are continually bringing that vision closer to reality.

www.uhn.ca

Union: Non-union
Number of vacancies: 1
New or Replacement Position: New
Site: MaRS
Department: Research
Reports to: Senior Scientist
SalaryRange: $89,197 - $133,809 annually
Hours: 37.5 hours per week
Shifts: Monday - Friday
Status: Permanent Full-time
Closing Date: August 12, 2026

Position Summary:
We seek an experienced senior leader in software product development, engineering operations, and AI-enabled platforms to join the AIRCHECK team at the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC). AIRCHECK, the Artificial Intelligence-Ready CHEmiCal Knowledge base (aircheck.ai), is a cloud-based platform designed to enable the open and FAIR sharing of large-scale chemical screening data for the global drug discovery community.

The successful candidate will play a central leadership role in transforming AIRCHECK from a research-driven platform into a well-managed, scalable, and widely used scientific product. This role is ideal for someone with experience leading software initiatives involving multiple developers, multidisciplinary teams, complex technical roadmaps, and a substantial user base. The candidate may come from industry, academia, or a hybrid environment, but must bring strong experience in product delivery, team coordination, software development processes, and stakeholder management.

The AIRCHECK team operates within an academic and open science environment while adopting product and engineering practices inspired by industry. The candidate will work closely with the scientific lead, software developers, AI/ML experts, data engineers, and collaborators across the SGC and its partner industries and institutions to ensure that AIRCHECK is delivered with clear priorities, milestones, timelines, and measurable outcomes.

Duties:

• Lead the planning, coordination, and execution of AIRCHECK’s software product roadmap, ensuring alignment between scientific goals, user needs, technical feasibility, and long-term sustainability.
• Manage and coordinate a multidisciplinary team of software developers, data engineers, AI/ML scientists, and technical contributors working on the AIRCHECK platform.
• Establish and maintain clear product development processes, including roadmap definition, agile workflows, sprint planning, milestone tracking, deliverable management, and regular reporting.
• Translate high-level scientific and strategic objectives into concrete technical plans, implementation priorities, timelines, and measurable deliverables.
• Work closely with scientific leadership to ensure that AIRCHECK supports the needs of the SGC and the broader open science and drug discovery communities.
• Shape a scalable, reliable, and intuitive platform that accelerates drug discovery by making AI-ready chemical screening data, AI/ML models, metadata, and related resources easy to share, access, and use.
• Coordinate priorities across platform components, including data ingestion, data curation, APIs, user interfaces, cloud infrastructure, documentation, analytics, AI/ML integration, and user support.
• Ensure that development practices support reproducibility, security, version control, testing, documentation, deployment, and long-term maintainability.
• Help define user engagement strategies, feedback loops, release cycles, onboarding processes, and platform success metrics.
• Identify operational risks, bottlenecks, dependencies, and resource gaps, and proactively propose solutions to keep the project on track.
• Foster a collaborative, accountable, and high-performing team culture that bridges academic research excellence and values with professional software product delivery.

• Master's Degree or PhD in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Cheminformatics, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent industry experience will also be considered.
• 7+ years of experience in software development, data platforms, AI/ML platforms, scientific computing, or related technical environments.
• Demonstrated experience leading software or data product initiatives involving multiple developers and cross-functional teams.
• Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices, including agile development, product roadmaps, sprint planning, issue tracking, version control, testing, release management, and documentation.
• Experience managing technical teams and coordinating contributors with different backgrounds, such as software engineers, data scientists, AI/ML researchers, domain scientists, and external collaborators.
• Experience with cloud-based platforms and scalable data infrastructure; familiarity with Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services is highly desirable.
• Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, MLOps, data pipelines, APIs, databases, and large-scale scientific or biomedical datasets.
• Ability to translate scientific and user needs into clear technical requirements, priorities, and deliverables.
• Excellent communication, organizational, and leadership skills, with the ability to bring structure to complex, evolving projects.
• Experience working with academic, non-profit, public-private partnership, or open science initiatives is an asset.
• Experience in drug discovery, cheminformatics, bioinformatics, structural biology, chemical biology, or biomedical AI is preferred but not required.
• A commitment to open science, FAIR data principles, reproducible research, and building resources that serve a broad scientific community.

Why join UHN?
In addition to working alongside some of the most talented and inspiring healthcare professionals in the world, UHN offers a wide range of benefits, programs and perks. It is the comprehensiveness of these offerings that makes it a differentiating factor, allowing you to find value where it matters most to you, now and throughout your career at UHN.

• Competitive offer packages
• Government organization and a member of the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP https://hoopp.com/)
• Close access to Transit and UHN shuttle service
• A flexible work environment
• Opportunities for development and promotions within a large organization
• Additional perks (multiple corporate discounts including: travel, restaurants, parking, phone plans, auto insurance discounts, on-site gyms, etc.)

Current UHN employees must have successfully completed their probationary period, have a good employee record along with satisfactory attendance in accordance with UHN's attendance management program, to be eligible for consideration.

All applications must be submitted before the posting close date.
UHN uses email to communicate with selected candidates. Please ensure you check your email regularly.At University Health Network (UHN), artificial intelligence technologies may be used to assist in the screening, assessment, and selection of candidates for this position.
Please be advised that a Criminal Record Check may be required of the successful candidate. Should it be determined that any information provided by a candidate be misleading, inaccurate or incorrect, UHN reserves the right to discontinue with the consideration of their application.
UHN is an equal opportunity employer committed to an inclusive recruitment process and workplace. Requests for accommodation can be made at any stage of the recruitment process. Applicants need to make their requirements known.
We thank all applicants for their interest, however, only those selected for further consideration will be contacted.