Head of Translational Science

Absentia Labs•Boston, MA

6d•Remote

About The Position

At Absentia Labs, we are building an AI-native IND-enabling safety platform for drug development. Our mission is to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations make better safety decisions earlier in development through human-relevant, AI-driven predictive toxicology. We believe the future of drug development will be shaped by intelligent systems capable of generating actionable safety insights before significant time, capital, and patient risk are incurred. This role exists to bridge the gap between technical progress, scientific validation, and regulatory momentum into meaningful adoption across pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations. The Head of Translational Science will serve as the scientific translation layer between technology, regulatory strategy, and real-world drug development. This individual will ensure that everything Absentia builds solves meaningful problems, integrates with existing workflows, earns the trust of scientific stakeholders, and delivers measurable value to customers. This is not a traditional research role. We are seeking a hands-on leader capable of connecting science, product, regulatory strategy, and customer needs to help define the adoption of AI-native safety assessment across the global drug development ecosystem. This individual will own scientific-market fit at Absentia. They will be responsible for ensuring that our platform addresses the highest-value problems in drug development, generates evidence that customers trust, and evolves in ways that support adoption across pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and regulatory organizations.

Requirements

PhD, PharmD, MD, DVM, or equivalent scientific training preferred.
Experience in toxicology, translational medicine, pharmacology, drug development, or nonclinical safety.
Experience within pharmaceutical, biotechnology, CRO, or translational research environments.
Strong communication and stakeholder-management capabilities.
Ability to operate in ambiguity and build new categories.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting IND-enabling programs, translational medicine initiatives, nonclinical safety assessment, or regulatory science activities.
Experience interacting with pharmaceutical decision-makers and cross-functional development teams.
Track record of scientific publications, conference presentations, and external stakeholder engagement.

Responsibilities

Define how Absentia’s platform maps to real-world decision-making across discovery, candidate selection, IND-enabling development, translational medicine, and clinical risk assessment.
Identify the highest-value workflows, use cases, and decision points for platform adoption.
Partner with leadership to shape product strategy and roadmap priorities.
Develop and maintain relationships with toxicology, nonclinical safety, translational medicine, and pharmacology leaders across pharma, biotech, CROs, and regulatory organizations.
Lead customer discovery efforts to identify unmet needs, adoption barriers, workflow requirements, and evidence expectations.
Translate customer insights into platform requirements, validation priorities, and product roadmap recommendations.
Understand how safety decisions are made within pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations.
Design workflows that make platform outputs actionable, interpretable, and trustworthy.
Ensure product development aligns with how customers actually operate.
Help define validation strategies, publication priorities, scientific collaborations, and evidence-generation initiatives.
Support the development of scientific narratives that facilitate adoption.
Help determine what evidence customers require before integrating the platform into decision-making processes.
Develop and manage relationships with key opinion leaders (KOLs), scientific advisors, academic collaborators, and industry experts.
Identify opportunities for strategic scientific collaborations, validation studies, and external partnerships.
Represent Absentia at scientific conferences, workshops, advisory meetings, and industry forums.
Partner closely with the CTO and the engineering team.
Collaborate with Regulatory Strategy leadership.
Support Business Development and Strategic Partnerships efforts.
Translate customer requirements into technical and scientific priorities.
Lead the development and execution of Absentia's scientific publication strategy
Identify and prioritize high-impact publication opportunities, including validation studies, benchmark analyses, case studies, methodological advancements, and regulatory science initiatives.
Serve as a primary author and contributor for peer-reviewed manuscripts, conference abstracts, scientific posters, white papers, technical reports, and thought leadership content.
Collaborate with the CTO, Regulatory Strategy leadership, and scientific teams to translate technical and regulatory progress into scientifically rigorous publications and external communications.
Coordinate with academic collaborators, key opinion leaders (KOLs), industry partners, and co-authors to develop, review, and submit scientific publications.
Establish and manage a publication roadmap that supports platform validation, regulatory engagement, scientific credibility, and commercial adoption.
Support preparation of scientific materials for major conferences, workshops, symposia, and industry events.
Ensure scientific communications accurately reflect platform capabilities, validation results, regulatory positioning, and intended use cases.
Help position Absentia as a recognized thought leader in AI-native safety assessment, computational toxicology, predictive safety sciences, and drug development innovation.
Track publication impact, scientific engagement, and citation opportunities to continuously strengthen Absentia's scientific reputation and market presence.
Develop publication strategies that support scientific credibility, regulatory engagement, customer adoption, fundraising, and category creation.