Senior Data Scientist

Novo Nordisk A/S; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Novo Nordisk A/S in the United Kingdom is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to design, build, and validate AI/ML models that advance treatments. You will translate LLMs, retrieval systems and agentic AI into reliable products for R&D teams across the US and EU, enabling faster, clearer decision making.

You will work with cross‑functional partners to deploy scalable AI solutions in healthcare, ensuring performance, safety and regulatory compliance while driving knowledge discovery to accelerate

Qualifications

• PhD with 1+ year’s experience, or a Master’s degree with 3+ years’ relevant experience.
• Background in healthcare, pharmaceuticals or life sciences, including deploying agentic AI.
• CI/CD best practices, including API development, cloud-based distributed systems, test automation and monitoring, particularly in stateful LLM systems.
• Automating serverless, event-driven pipelines on cloud platforms.
• Familiarity with Design Thinking, Agile, Scrum and Kanban, and an understanding of data governance, privacy (GDPR) and regulatory considerations for AI in healthcare.

Responsibilities

• Develop and validate LLM-based models for content retrieval, generation, summarisation and inference in healthcare and drug development.
• Architect services, design APIs, build backend systems and integrate with frontend applications, so AI products meet performance, safety and privacy requirements.
• Build and maintain the vector databases, embedding pipelines and knowledge bases that support RAG and document understanding.
• Collaborate with partners to turn AI/ML algorithms into products and create runbooks and training materials.
• Stay current on GenAI and LLM research and bring learnings into the team’s work.

Skills

Machine learning

Software engineering

CI/CD

API development

Cloud platforms

Data governance

Education

PhD + 1+ year

Master's + 3+ years

Job description

As Senior Data Scientist, you will design, build and validate AI and machine learning models that help tackle some of the hardest problems in discovering and developing new treatments. You will turn large language models, retrieval systems and agentic AI into reliable products for colleagues across Research & Development in the US and EU. Your work will help teams find, summarise and use knowledge faster, so promising ideas can move forward with clarity and speed.

What you’ll bring

You combine deep machine learning knowledge with hands‑on software engineering. You will need:

A PhD with 1+ year’s experience, or a Master’s degree with 3+ years’ relevant experience.

• Background in healthcare, pharmaceuticals or life sciences, including deploying agentic AI.
• CI/CD best practices, including API development, MCP implementation, cloud-based distributed systems, test automation and monitoring, particularly in stateful LLM systems.
• Automating serverless, event‑driven pipelines on cloud platforms.
• Familiarity with Design Thinking, Agile, Scrum and Kanban, and an understanding of data governance, privacy (GDPR) and regulatory considerations for AI in healthcare.

What you’ll do

You will explore and create new methods and technology for R&D challenges in healthcare, combining data collection, processing and engineering with software engineering. You will work with a high degree of initiative and self‑sufficiency.

• Develop and validate LLM-based models for content retrieval, generation, summarisation and inference in healthcare and drug development.
• Architect services, design APIs, build backend systems and integrate with frontend applications, so AI products meet performance, safety, privacy and ethics requirements from end to end.
• Build and maintain the vector databases, embedding pipelines and knowledge bases that support RAG and document understanding.
• Work closely with partners and collaborators to turn AI/ML algorithms and models into products, and create the technical documentation, runbooks and training materials that keep them well used and maintained.
• Stay current on GenAI and LLM research, best practices and technology roadmaps, and bring what you learn into the team’s work.

Who you’ll work with

You will join Cognitive AI and Reasoning, a team of 12 people across two hiring managers within Research & Development, and report to the Associate Director of Cognitive AI and Reasoning. The team applies novel algorithms and machine learning techniques to some of the hardest problems in discovering and developing new treatments, blending scientific, problem‑solving and quantitative skills.

Your projects will span the R&D landscape, with stakeholders across the US and EU. You will partner with data scientists, engineers, software developers, system engineers, designers, medical doctors, IT professionals, and technology scouts and partnership developers to understand challenges, find where innovation can make a real difference and build what is needed. External collaborations give the team access to cutting‑edge research and technology.

What you can expect here

You will work in multidisciplinary teams where your expertise is valued and you are trusted to take ownership. The team helps each other grow, and the role gives you room to expand your skills across LLMs, agentic AI, retrieval systems and cloud engineering through hands‑on work with internal and external partners.

You will also join Novo Nordisk at the forefront of AI and technology, as we upskill our entire workforce to advance AI as a main driver for innovation, for the benefit of people living with serious chronic diseases.

Salary:

For this role, the Annual Base Salary ranges correspond to the level of the position. The placement within the salary range will be assessed during the recruitment process based on the candidate's skills, competencies, knowledge and relevant experience.

Incentives and Benefits

The salary package may include short-term and/or long-term incentives as well as other employee benefits based on position level, location, functional area and relevant market benchmarks.

Learn more about our Reward Philosophy here

We are an equal opportunities employer and are committed to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all applicants. If you require adjustments during the application or selection process, please contact [e-mail] and include your name, the role you are applying for and the adjustment you require.