Data Science Specialist (Senior Product Lead)
About The Position
We seek an experienced senior leader in software product development, engineering operations, and AI-enabled platforms to join the AIRCHECK team at the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC). AIRCHECK, the Artificial Intelligence-Ready CHEmiCal Knowledge base (aircheck.ai), is a cloud-based platform designed to enable the open and FAIR sharing of large-scale chemical screening data for the global drug discovery community. The successful candidate will play a central leadership role in transforming AIRCHECK from a research-driven platform into a well-managed, scalable, and widely used scientific product. This role is ideal for someone with experience leading software initiatives involving multiple developers, multidisciplinary teams, complex technical roadmaps, and a substantial user base. The candidate may come from industry, academia, or a hybrid environment, but must bring strong experience in product delivery, team coordination, software development processes, and stakeholder management. The AIRCHECK team operates within an academic and open science environment while adopting product and engineering practices inspired by industry. The candidate will work closely with the scientific lead, software developers, AI/ML experts, data engineers, and collaborators across the SGC and its partner industries and institutions to ensure that AIRCHECK is delivered with clear priorities, milestones, timelines, and measurable outcomes.
Requirements
- Master's Degree or PhD in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Cheminformatics, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent industry experience will also be considered.
- 7+ years of experience in software development, data platforms, AI/ML platforms, scientific computing, or related technical environments.
- Demonstrated experience leading software or data product initiatives involving multiple developers and cross-functional teams.
- Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices, including agile development, product roadmaps, sprint planning, issue tracking, version control, testing, release management, and documentation.
- Experience managing technical teams and coordinating contributors with different backgrounds, such as software engineers, data scientists, AI/ML researchers, domain scientists, and external collaborators.
- Experience with cloud-based platforms and scalable data infrastructure; familiarity with Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services is highly desirable.
- Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, MLOps, data pipelines, APIs, databases, and large-scale scientific or biomedical datasets.
- Ability to translate scientific and user needs into clear technical requirements, priorities, and deliverables.
- Excellent communication, organizational, and leadership skills, with the ability to bring structure to complex, evolving projects.
- A commitment to open science, FAIR data principles, reproducible research, and building resources that serve a broad scientific community.
Nice To Haves
- Experience working with academic, non-profit, public-private partnership, or open science initiatives is an asset.
- Experience in drug discovery, cheminformatics, bioinformatics, structural biology, chemical biology, or biomedical AI is preferred but not required.
Responsibilities
- Lead the planning, coordination, and execution of AIRCHECK’s software product roadmap, ensuring alignment between scientific goals, user needs, technical feasibility, and long-term sustainability.
- Manage and coordinate a multidisciplinary team of software developers, data engineers, AI/ML scientists, and technical contributors working on the AIRCHECK platform.
- Establish and maintain clear product development processes, including roadmap definition, agile workflows, sprint planning, milestone tracking, deliverable management, and regular reporting.
- Translate high-level scientific and strategic objectives into concrete technical plans, implementation priorities, timelines, and measurable deliverables.
- Work closely with scientific leadership to ensure that AIRCHECK supports the needs of the SGC and the broader open science and drug discovery communities.
- Shape a scalable, reliable, and intuitive platform that accelerates drug discovery by making AI-ready chemical screening data, AI/ML models, metadata, and related resources easy to share, access, and use.
- Coordinate priorities across platform components, including data ingestion, data curation, APIs, user interfaces, cloud infrastructure, documentation, analytics, AI/ML integration, and user support.
- Ensure that development practices support reproducibility, security, version control, testing, documentation, deployment, and long-term maintainability.
- Help define user engagement strategies, feedback loops, release cycles, onboarding processes, and platform success metrics.
- Identify operational risks, bottlenecks, dependencies, and resource gaps, and proactively propose solutions to keep the project on track.
- Foster a collaborative, accountable, and high-performing team culture that bridges academic research excellence and values with professional software product delivery.
Benefits
- Competitive offer packages
- Government organization and a member of the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP)
- Close access to Transit and UHN shuttle service
- A flexible work environment
- Opportunities for development and promotions within a large organization
- Additional perks (multiple corporate discounts including: travel, restaurants, parking, phone plans, auto insurance discounts, on-site gyms, etc.)
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
