Director, Data Scientist - Clinical AI at AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca; Barcelona; Híbrido; EUR 150.000 - 190.000; Jornada completa

Ventajas ofrecidas por este puesto de trabajo

Visa sponsorship

Global mobility

Descripción de la vacante

AstraZeneca Spain is seeking a Director, Data Scientist for Clinical AI in Barcelona, Spain, with global collaboration and a strong focus on AI-driven clinical development. The role blends scientific leadership, cross-functional influence, and regulatory readiness across Mayo Clinic-style workflows and enterprise AI platforms.

You will shape AI methodologies, mentor senior scientists, and drive end-to-end clinical AI initiatives with a global impact.

Formación

• PhD in CS or related quantitative field.
• 4–8 years post-PhD in AI/ML with impact in clinical/biomedical settings.
• Experience translating AI methods into clinical decisions and engaging with regulatory bodies.

Responsabilidades

• Define and drive the AI methodology roadmap for Clinical AI programmes.
• Lead high-stakes AI projects with matrix influence and regulatory alignment.
• Develop enterprise-grade AI methods and evaluation frameworks for clinical trials.

Conocimientos

AI methodology

Cross-functional leadership

Mentorship

Educación

PhD in Computer Science or related quantitative discipline

Herramientas

Python

PyTorch

Cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)

Descripción del empleo

Apply for Director, Data Scientist - Clinical AI at AstraZeneca in Barcelona, CT, ES. This Visa sponsorship job abroad position offers great opportunities for career growth. 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

• 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: governance of acquisition, curation, 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.

Essential Requirements

• 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 notes).
• Deep expertise in modern AI methodologies, including one or more of: foundation model training and fine‑tuning; Bayesian inference; temporal and longitudinal modelling; multimodal integration; model calibration and domain adaptation; data‑centric AI; model interpretability; model post‑training and alignment.
• Exceptional software engineering skills: Python, deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch), frontier coding agent frameworks, modern LLM tooling, and cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Demonstrated experience translating AI methods into applications that inform clinical and/or biomedical decisions, including prospective evaluation or contribution to submission‑relevant evidence.
• Track record of driving scientific influence across cross‑functional communities — ML, clinical, biostatistics, regulatory — without relying on formal authority.
• Peer‑reviewed publications in clinical AI, computational drug development, or leading ML venues (e.g. NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, Nature Medicine, Lancet Digital Health).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with demonstrated ability to translate technical findings for clinical, regulatory, and executive audiences.

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Direct industry experience in early or late phase BioPharmaceuticals clinical development, including clinical trial design, biomarker discovery, companion diagnostics, dosing, safety, endpoints, or regulatory processes.
• Direct experience contributing to FDA, EMA, PMDA, or MHRA submissions involving AI/ML methods or innovative trial designs.
• Prior regulatory engagement on AI methodology, complex innovative trial design, or AI/ML qualification opinions.
• Experience with MLOps and LLMOps at scale, including CI/CD pipelines and enterprise deployment.
• Open‑source contributions, workshop organisation, or standards‑body participation.
• Knowledge of computing hardware and its impact on model training and inference at scale.
• Experience in a complex global organisation spanning multiple sites and therapy areas.
• Strong proficiency in augmenting — but not supplanting — daily knowledge work with agentic AI tools.
• Proactively up‑to‑date with the latest AI research; tries out new tools and methods of interest without waiting to be directed.
• Team‑oriented mindset: does what is best for the team and the programme, not just the individual deliverable.
• Ability to deliver high‑quality, high‑impact contributions independently and at pace.
• Comfort with ambiguity and an instinct to learn in public, prototype early, and fail forward.
• Deep, up‑to‑date knowledge of the ML literature and active connections with the ML community.

Why AstraZeneca?

Here, technology and science meet to change what is possible for patients. You will join a company investing boldly in AI and data to become truly data‑led, where unexpected teams come together to address problems that have never been solved before. When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we ignite bold thinking with the power to inspire life‑changing medicines. The playbook for AI in clinical development will be written in the next two to three years. You will help write it — with an outsized voice at regulatory agencies, scientific consortia, and external partners during the narrow window when the rules of the road for AI in pivotal evidence are being defined. That is the reason to come. We hire for learning agility and technical excellence. The strongest candidates here learn fast, are comfortable with ambiguity, prototype early, fail forward, and partner credibly across communities. We balance the expectation of being in the office — on average at least three days per week — while respecting individual flexibility.

So, What's Next?

Are you ready to set the AI methodology agenda for BioPharma clinical development at one of the world's leading biopharmaceutical companies?

Date Posted 09-sep.-2026 Closing Date 29-sep.-2026 AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry‑leading skills. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics. We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non‑discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.

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Reasons to Join

Thomas Mathisen There are many things I enjoy when working at AstraZeneca, mainly the Speak up culture, the great colleagues that are in my teams, the great products that AstraZeneca provides to our patients and the challenging conversations I have around our medicines.

Sales Representative Oslo, Norway There are many things I enjoy when working at AstraZeneca, mainly the Speak up culture, the great colleagues that are in my teams, the great products that AstraZeneca provides to our patients and the challenging conversations I have around our medicines.

Christine Recchio Working at AstraZeneca has impacted my life in such a positive way. I now have an improved work‑life balance through creating my own schedule and time management, I feel a balance that I didn’t have before.

Sales Representative California, United States Working at AstraZeneca has impacted my life in such a positive way. I now have an improved work‑life balance through creating my own schedule and time management, I feel a balance that I didn’t have before.

Stephanie Ling There are a lot of reasons why I enjoy working in AstraZeneca, my colleagues being one of them. My team members and the managers have provided a great deal of guidance in helping me to be more confident in my daily work.

Sales Representative Petaling Jaya, Malaysia There are a lot of reasons why I enjoy working in AstraZeneca, my colleagues being one of them. My team members and the managers have provided a great deal of guidance in helping me to be more confident in my daily work.

What we offer

• We're driven by our shared values of serving people, society and the planet. Our people make this possible, which is why we prioritise diversity, inclusivity, balance and sustainability. Discover what a career at AstraZeneca could mean for you.
• An award‑winning company We're passionate about being a great place to work, and 84% of our employees would recommend us as an employer. We've been recognised as a Top Employer in Spain, an EFR Family Responsible Business, and we achieved third place in Forbes Spain's Top 50 Best Places to Work list.
• Inclusive environment Diversity and inclusion are embedded in everything we do, and our different views, experiences and strengths enrich our culture. There's no salary gap at AstraZeneca, and the number of female employees has increased by four per cent over the last three years. We've also made all positions fully accessible.
• Work‑life balance Your wellbeing means a lot to us, and we're here to support you through all of life's ups and downs. That's why we offer an unpaid leave policy, annual leave, reduced‑hours timetables and a host of benefits, including a retirement plan, long service award, and health and travel insurance.
• Sustainability initiatives We're committed to harnessing the power of science to become a more sustainable business. We've reduced our carbon footprint by over 9,000 kg of CO\2 over the last two years, and we lead the European GoGreen Project, which aims to introduce environmentally friendly options in our fleet of corporate vehicles.