Senior PI, Autonomous AI for Lab Discovery

Biopharma Careers; Pennsylvania; On-site; USD 137,000 - 236,000; Full time

Job summary

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine is recruiting a Senior Principal Investigator, Physical AI for Autonomous Discovery to lead hands-on development of AI-driven autonomous laboratory capabilities in the In Silico Drug Discovery team. The preferred location is Spring House, PA, with potential travel; Cambridge, MA area considered with no remote option.

You will design, implement, and validate AI systems that perceive laboratory state, optimize experiments, and improve outcomes in a

Qualifications

• PhD in AI, ML, robotics, CS, engineering, computational biology, or related field.
• Proven ability to deploy AI systems in physical, scientific environments.
• Deep expertise in world models, RL, Bayesian optimization, or related areas.
• Advanced software skills in Python and modern ML frameworks; production deployment.
• Ability to define technical workstreams and deliver robust solutions with limited direction.

Responsibilities

• Lead hands-on design, development, and validation of AI models representing instruments, samples, reagents, robotic systems, workflows, and lab state.
• Develop adaptive experimental optimization methods using active learning and Bayesian optimization.
• Implement anomaly detection and corrective actions in autonomous lab workflows.
• Build models that generate testable hypotheses for failures and guide follow-up experiments.
• Develop agentic and multi-agent capabilities supporting experiment planning and execution across cycles.
• Translate needs into requirements and prototypes with automation, robotics, data science, and discovery scientists.
• Provide technical guidance and mentor colleagues.

Skills

World Models

Autonomous Experimentation

Error Intelligence

Robotics & Automation

Agentic AI

Python & ML Frameworks

Education

PhD in AI/ML/Robotics

Tools

Python

Job description

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine is recruiting a Senior Principal Investigator, Physical AI for Autonomous Discovery to lead hands-on development of AI-driven autonomous laboratory capabilities in the In Silico Drug Discovery team. The preferred location is Spring House, PA, with potential travel; Cambridge, MA area considered with no remote option.

You will design, implement, and validate AI systems that perceive laboratory state, optimize experiments, and improve outcomes in a