Imaging Foundation Models Lead for Immunology & Oncology

Socket.dev; Cambridge (MA); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 228,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

401(k) plan

Paid holidays

Vacation

Job summary

Merck is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to develop scalable imaging foundation models for immunology and oncology biomarker discovery. You will lead segmentation-driven pipelines and interpretable workflows, collaborating with immunologists, pathologists, and translational teams to ensure biological relevance.

The role requires a PhD or MS with strong CV/biomedical imaging expertise, proficiency in Python and PyTorch, and a passion for translating image-derived insights into clinical endpoints.

Qualifications

• PhD or MS with 4+ years in CV/biomedical imaging or related field.
• Strong expertise in computer vision and medical image analysis or multimodal data.
• Experience with segmentation, detection, and representation learning, preferably in histopathology.
• Proficiency in Python and PyTorch.
• Interest in immunology and tissue-based biomarker discovery.
• Ability to communicate complex ideas to multidisciplinary teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop and train imaging foundation models for histopathology, focusing on immune tissue.
• Build segmentation-driven, cell-centric pipelines and spatial analyses.
• Design interpretable workflows linking image features to hypotheses and endpoints.
• Apply zero-shot and weakly supervised learning to extract immune signals from H&E and IHC data.
• Collaborate with immunologists, pathologists and translational teams.
• Support imaging biomarker development, including companion diagnostics.
• Contribute to platform imaging strategies and QC standards.
• Share findings through internal forums and publications.

Skills

Computer vision

Medical image analysis

Python

PyTorch

Biomarker discovery

Interpretable modeling

Communication with multidisciplinary

Education

PhD in Computer Science or related field

MS in STEM with 4+ years industry

Tools

PyTorch

Transformers

Job description

Merck is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to develop scalable imaging foundation models for immunology and oncology biomarker discovery. You will lead segmentation-driven pipelines and interpretable workflows, collaborating with immunologists, pathologists, and translational teams to ensure biological relevance.

The role requires a PhD or MS with strong CV/biomedical imaging expertise, proficiency in Python and PyTorch, and a passion for translating image-derived insights into clinical endpoints.