Lead Data Scientist - Pharma R&D & Team Leadership

Placements24; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Bonus structure

Medical insurance

Leadership development

Advanced computational resources

Job summary

Placements24 in South Africa seeks a Lead Data Scientist to guide pharmaceutical research, leveraging advanced modeling and ML to drive drug discovery. You will lead a team of data scientists, collaborate with bench scientists and clinicians, and shape data-driven decisions across R&D in Tembisa.

The role requires a Master's or PhD in a quantitative field, 7+ years in data science within pharma/biotech, and proficiency in Python or R, ML libraries, SQL, Spark/Hadoop, with strong leadership and

Qualifications

• Master's or Ph.D. in Data Science, CS, Statistics, Bioinformatics, or a related field.
• 7+ years of data science experience, with pharma/biotech exposure preferred.
• Proficiency in Python or R and data science libraries (scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Strong SQL and big data tech experience (Spark/Hadoop).

Responsibilities

• Develop and lead advanced machine learning models for drug discovery and clinical insights.
• Mentor and manage a team of data scientists; drive project success.
• Collaborate with bench scientists and clinicians to define data needs.
• Design and maintain data pipelines ensuring quality and accessibility.
• Stay current with advances in data science and computational biology.

Skills

Data Modeling

Machine Learning

Leadership

R&D Collaboration

Statistical Analysis

Education

Master's or PhD in a quantitative field

Tools

Python

R

scikit-learn

TensorFlow

PyTorch

SQL

Spark

Hadoop

Job description

Placements24 in South Africa seeks a Lead Data Scientist to guide pharmaceutical research, leveraging advanced modeling and ML to drive drug discovery. You will lead a team of data scientists, collaborate with bench scientists and clinicians, and shape data-driven decisions across R&D in Tembisa.

The role requires a Master's or PhD in a quantitative field, 7+ years in data science within pharma/biotech, and proficiency in Python or R, ML libraries, SQL, Spark/Hadoop, with strong leadership and