Senior AI Impact & Applied Innovation Lead (Oncology)

AstraZeneca plc; Cambourne; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Excellent Benefits

Job summary

AstraZeneca plc is seeking a Senior AI Impact and Applied Innovation Specialist to translate frontier AI capabilities into measurable impact across oncology R&D. You will lead cross‑departmental projects, map high‑value AI questions, and steward scientific hypotheses from concept to deployment.

You will drive evaluation standards, harness interdisciplinary expertise, and communicate progress to senior leadership.

Qualifications

• PhD preferred; Master's with substantial relevant experience considered.
• Experience applying AI/ML to clinical, genomic, transcriptomic, or biomedical data in drug development.
• Strong scientific literacy across the oncology drug development pipeline.
• Familiarity with AI in drug development, including foundation models for biological data.
• Ability to translate questions into tractable AI problems with clear success criteria.
• Experience evaluating AI model quality in clinical context, accounting for confounding and generalisation.
• Track record working across multidisciplinary teams with AI/clinical scientists.
• Excellent written and oral scientific communication to non-technical senior audiences.
• Comfort with ambiguity and bias for action; ability to prioritise under uncertainty.

Responsibilities

• AI Landscape and Opportunity Mapping across AZ's capabilities and external data.
• Identify high-priority scientific questions where frontier AI adds value.
• Apply evaluation standards for AI-driven frameworks and R&D goals.
• Design and apply evaluation approaches for generative and agentic systems with benchmarks.
• Advise on automating steps in scientific, clinical and operational research processes.
• Translate hypotheses into time-bounded projects with clear success criteria.
• Establish frameworks to quantify AI project impacts for the business.
• Communicate priorities and status to senior stakeholders across sections.

Skills

AI/ML methods

Biomedical data analysis

Scientific communication

Cross-functional collaboration

Problem framing

Education

PhD in quantitative biology or computational discipline

Master's degree with substantial relevant experience

Job description

AstraZeneca plc is seeking a Senior AI Impact and Applied Innovation Specialist to translate frontier AI capabilities into measurable impact across oncology R&D. You will lead cross‑departmental projects, map high‑value AI questions, and steward scientific hypotheses from concept to deployment.

You will drive evaluation standards, harness interdisciplinary expertise, and communicate progress to senior leadership.