Director, Physical AI for Autonomous Discovery

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine•Cambridge, MA

2d•$164,000 - $282,900•Onsite

About The Position

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine is recruiting a Director, Physical AI for Autonomous Discovery to join its In Silico Drug Discovery team. The Director will define the Physical AI strategy and lead a focused team developing models that enable autonomous laboratory experimentation. The role combines AI, robotics, laboratory automation, and scientific reasoning to build systems that perceive, reason, act, learn, recover from errors, and continuously improve experimental outcomes. The position is preferably based in Spring House, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia area, and may require travel as needed. Candidates near Cambridge, Massachusetts, may also be considered. There is no remote option. The Director will work with J&J IT and Data, Data Science & AI partners to deliver a robust and secure agentic platform, and will collaborate with automation, robotics, data science, engineering, and discovery scientists to deploy reliable closed-loop learning in real laboratory environments.

Requirements

PhD in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, computer science, engineering, computational biology, or a related quantitative field.
Demonstrated experience developing AI systems that operate in physical or scientific environments.
Deep expertise in several relevant areas, such as world models, reinforcement learning, Bayesian optimization, causal inference, multimodal AI, robotics, or scientific machine learning.
Strong software-development skills, including Python and modern machine-learning frameworks.
Ability to translate scientific and operational requirements into robust, scalable AI models and communicate across multidisciplinary teams.
Strong collaboration skills to work in a matrix environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience with self-driving laboratories, laboratory automation, or closed-loop scientific experimentation.
Experience with vision-language-action models, digital twins, machine vision, robotic control, or multi-agent systems.
Experience in biologics, drug discovery, life sciences, or another complex experimental domain.
Experience deploying safety-critical or high-reliability AI systems with monitoring and governance controls.

Responsibilities

Define and execute the Physical AI strategy, build and lead a high-performing team, and establish a roadmap aligned with scientific priorities and business objectives.
Develop AI models that understand and reason about instruments, samples, reagents, robotic systems, workflows, and laboratory state.
Build adaptive experimental optimization capabilities using active learning, Bayesian optimization, reinforcement learning, and multi-objective optimization.
Create systems for physical error detection and correction, including anomaly recognition, root-cause assessment, workflow replanning, recovery actions, and appropriate human escalation.
Develop models that generate hypotheses for experimental failures, unexpected results, variability, and irreproducibility, and recommend discriminating follow-up experiments.
Design agentic and multi-agent systems to coordinate experiment planning, execution monitoring, data interpretation, and decision-making across Design-Make-Test-Analyze cycles.
Partner with automation, robotics, data science, engineering, and discovery scientists to deploy reliable closed-loop learning in real laboratory environments.
Embed calibrated uncertainty, safety constraints, monitoring, traceability, and governance into autonomous decision-making.
Work closely with J&J IT and Data, Data Science & AI partners to deliver a robust and secure agentic platform.

Benefits

Annual performance bonus, subject to applicable plan terms and company discretion.
Medical insurance.
Dental insurance.
Vision insurance.
Life insurance.
Short- and long-term disability insurance.
Business accident insurance.
Group legal insurance.
Pension plan, subject to eligibility.
401(k) savings plan, subject to eligibility.
Vacation: up to 120 hours per calendar year.
Sick time: up to 40 hours per calendar year.
Holiday pay, including floating holidays: up to 13 days per calendar year.
Work, Personal and Family Time: up to 40 hours per calendar year.