Lead ML Engineer - Drug Discovery, Hybrid

Placements24; George; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 2,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical aid

Pension fund

Conference attendance

Hybrid work arrangement

Hybrid work in George

Job summary

Placements24 is partnering with a leading pharmaceutical AI research group to recruit a Lead Machine Learning Engineer in George, Western Cape. You will design, implement, and deploy ML models for drug discovery, mentor a growing team, and collaborate with chemists and biologists to translate research needs into production-ready solutions.

The role demands a PhD or MSc in a quantitative field, 7+ years in ML, and strong experience with TensorFlow or PyTorch, Python, and cloud platforms.

Qualifications

• Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, ML, Statistics, Physics, or related field.
• 7+ years in machine learning with production deployment experience.
• Proven experience leading ML projects and mentoring junior engineers.
• Expertise in TensorFlow, PyTorch or Keras.
• Strong Python and libraries (scikit-learn, pandas, NumPy).
• Familiarity with cheminformatics and bioinformatics is a plus.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Excellent communication and leadership skills.
• Hybrid work environment capability.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development and deployment of ML models for drug discovery.
• Oversee ML lifecycle from data to deployment and monitoring.
• Mentor a team of ML engineers and data scientists.
• Collaborate with cheminformaticians, biologists and chemists to translate needs.
• Develop robust, scalable, production-ready ML infrastructure.
• Stay current with ML advances and their pharma applications.
• Communicate project results to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Contribute to AI strategy and roadmap for the organization.

Skills

Leadership

Machine Learning

Deep Learning

Python

Education

PhD in CS/ML/Related

Master's degree in quantitative field

Tools

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Keras

scikit-learn

NumPy

Pandas

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Placements24 is partnering with a leading pharmaceutical AI research group to recruit a Lead Machine Learning Engineer in George, Western Cape. You will design, implement, and deploy ML models for drug discovery, mentor a growing team, and collaborate with chemists and biologists to translate research needs into production-ready solutions.

The role demands a PhD or MSc in a quantitative field, 7+ years in ML, and strong experience with TensorFlow or PyTorch, Python, and cloud platforms.