AI and Data Science Product Manager

Merck & Co.; West Point (PA); Hybrid; USD 87,000 - 137,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work arrangement

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Merck & Co. seeks an experienced Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer, or AI Product Manager to join its AI capability engineering team.

The role blends data science with product ownership for NLP and Generative AI products to turn prototypes into reliable, production‑ready services across R&D data streams. You will work with data scientists, developers and subject matter experts, gaining hands‑on exposure to LLM systems and driving cross‑functional product discovery, requirements gathering,

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional experience in data science, AI/ML Engineering, Agentic AI, AI Product Management, or related discipline.
• HS diploma

Responsibilities

• Partner with business partners and scientists to understand pain points and translate needs into technical user stories.
• Own and prioritize your product backlog and organize it for regular deliveries.
• Author clear requirements, acceptance criteria and value capture plans for cross‑functional teams.
• Demonstrate adoption strategies: demo features, lead enablement sessions, gather feedback, measure adoption metrics.
• Understand structured and unstructured data to address partner needs.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering to integrate prototypes into production pipelines.
• Establish clear evaluation metrics and confirm performance for business needs.

Skills

Python

SQL

Git

Pandas

NLP

LangChain

LangGraph

LLM

Education

Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Biomedical Informatics, Engineering, or related field

Tools

Hugging Face

spaCy

LangChain

LangGraph

Job description

We are seeking an experienced Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer, or AI Product Manager with a passion for Product Management to join our AI capability engineering team. This role is ideal for someone who has demonstrated strong analytical or AI/ML fundamentals and is eager to expand their scope into product ownership of our NLP and Generative AI products. The focus is turning ML, LLM, and Agentic AI prototypes into reliable, maintainable services that enable insights from unstructured and semi-structured data from across our company's research and development pipeline.

You’ll be mentored by a senior product manager and work directly alongside other data scientists, developers, and scientific subject matter experts. You’ll gain hands‑on exposure to large language model (LLM) systems, see your work accelerate research, and ultimately help bring therapeutics to patients. As you grow, you’ll have opportunities to expand your skills by owning one or more products, including leading product discovery, requirements gathering, stakeholder engagement, and adoption. The position is embedded within a cross‑disciplinary team of data scientists, bioinformaticians, and engineers dedicated to using cutting‑edge AI/ML and data science techniques to drive drug discovery and development.

Primary Responsibilities

• Product Discovery & Stakeholder Alignment: Partner with business partners and scientists to understand operational pain points, uncover high‑value opportunities, and translate ambiguous needs into technical user stories.
• Backlog & Roadmap Prioritization: Own and prioritize your product's backlog and organize it for regular deliveries.
• Requirement Specifications: Author clear requirements, acceptance criteria, and value capture plans to ensure that technical teams and business stakeholders share a unified definition of success.
• Adoption & Change Management: Connect with users — demo features, lead user enablement sessions, gather structured feedback, and measure adoption metrics to drive continuous product refinement.
• Exploratory Data Analysis: Understand our partners' structured and unstructured data and how it can be used to address their needs.
• Pipeline Integration: Collaborate with Data Engineering teammates to integrate data science prototypes into reliable, production‑ready pipelines, adhering to software engineering best practices.
• Validation: Establish clear evaluation metrics and confirm sufficient performance for the business need.

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical Foundations: Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, git, and data manipulation libraries (e.g., Pandas).
• Model Evaluation & Validation: Demonstrated experience establishing model evaluation frameworks (e.g., defining LLM benchmarks, measuring precision/recall for NLP tasks) to ensure business viability.
• NLP and Agentic AI Exposure: Hands‑on experience or academic familiarity with NLP techniques, (e.g., Hugging Face, spaCy, LangChain) to parse unstructured or semi‑structured data and to Agentic AI frameworks such as LangGraph.
• Familiarity with LLM and Agentic AI Architectures & Techniques: Practical exposure to Large Language Model (LLM) workflows, including Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG), prompt engineering, and fine‑tuning paradigms.
• Eagerness to transition into product management: With prior exposure to drafting technical requirements, defining success metrics, or structuring user stories.
• Exceptional ability to translate complex data science concepts to cross‑functional stakeholders and an eagerness to acquire domain knowledge.
• Familiarity with AI Coding Assistants a plus.
• A Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Biomedical Informatics, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Minimum Requirements

• 3+ years of professional experience in data science, AI/ML Engineering, Agentic AI, AI Product Management, or related discipline.
• HS diploma

Required Skills

• Asset Management
• Asset Management
• Benefits Management
• Biomedical Informatics
• Computer Science
• Data Domain
• Data Engineering
• Data Science
• Exploratory Analysis
• Generative AI
• LangGraph
• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Management System Development
• Pandas Python Library
• Product Adoption
• Product Discovery
• Product Improvements
• Product Management
• Product Ownership
• Prompt Engineering
• Requirements Management
• Retrieval‑Augmented Generation
• Stakeholder Relationship Management
• Strategic Planning
• System Designs {+ 1 more}

As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.--As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.- For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:

EEOC Know Your Rights

EEOC GINA Supplement

We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another's thinking and approach problems collectively.

The primary location for this posting is:

USA - Pennsylvania - West Point

The salary range for the primary location of this role is:

$87,300.00 - $137,400.00

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits .

Additional location(s)

Please note the salary range above applies to the Primary Location of the position. Where a role has other listed locations, different compensation guidelines may apply. You may find the salary ranges for additional locations below. If the salary range is not listed for the location you are applying to, our Talent Acquisition team will provide further information to you relevant to your location.

San Francisco Residents Only

We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Los Angeles Residents Only

We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles' Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance.

Employee Status: Regular

Relocation: No relocation

VISA Sponsorship: No

Travel Requirements: No Travel Required

Flexible Work Arrangements: Hybrid

Shift: Not Indicated

Valid Driving License: No

Hazardous Material(s): n/a