Remote Senior AI/ML Scientist for Drug Discovery

Placements24; Bloemfontein; Hybrid; ZAR 2,001,000 - 3,001,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first company culture

Competitive compensation and equity

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Senior Computational Scientist to join a remote-first pharma AI team. You will develop ML models for drug discovery, analyze complex biological and chemical data, and collaborate with chemists, biologists, and data scientists.

PhD and 6+ years in ML, strong Python and ML library skills, cloud experience, and a track record of publications or patents are required. This is a global, collaborative research role with significant impact.

Qualifications

• PhD with ML focus in quantitative field required.
• Minimum 6 years applying AI/ML to complex problems, pharma/biotech preferred.
• Expertise in ML algorithms and deployment using TF, PyTorch or scikit-learn.
• Strong Python programming and data analysis libraries (NumPy, Pandas, SciPy).
• Knowledge of cheminformatics and/or bioinformatics data types.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP) is highly desirable.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills; strong communication.
• Publications and/or patents demonstrate scientific contributions.

Responsibilities

• Develop, implement, and validate advanced ML models for drug discovery.
• Analyze large-scale biological, chemical, and clinical data with statistical methods.
• Collaborate with chemists, biologists, and other computational scientists to apply insights.
• Design computational experiments, evaluate models, and iterate to improve accuracy.
• Stay current with AI/ML, cheminformatics, and bioinformatics advancements.
• Build scalable pipelines and leverage cloud computing environments.

Skills

Machine learning mastery

Python programming

Research & publications

Remote collaboration

Analytical thinking

Education

PhD in Computational Chemistry, CS, Bioinformatics, Statistics, Physics, or related ML field

Tools

TensorFlow

PyTorch

scikit-learn

NumPy

Pandas

SciPy

AWS / Azure / GCP

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a Senior Computational Scientist to join a remote-first pharma AI team. You will develop ML models for drug discovery, analyze complex biological and chemical data, and collaborate with chemists, biologists, and data scientists.

PhD and 6+ years in ML, strong Python and ML library skills, cloud experience, and a track record of publications or patents are required. This is a global, collaborative research role with significant impact.