Principal Scientist – AI-Reasoning for Drug Discovery

Johnson & Johnson • New Brunswick, PA

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

The DDSAI-OCMO team is seeking a visionary Principal Scientist to architect an AI-Reasoning platform to support Translational Safety decision making in drug discovery and development. You'll pioneer the development of innovative reasoning platform that scientists can access through Large Language Models (LLMs) and agentic systems, harnessing Multimodal Scientific data across Discovery, Preclinical, Clinical, and RWE domains, harnessing large scale datasets spanning scientific literature, omics, biomolecular knowledge, and manufacturing processes to fundamentally transform how we bring therapeutics to patients. Your innovations in areas such as multimodal reasoning, agent adaptability and uncertainty, memory architecture, and motivation frameworks will directly compress discovery timelines and accelerate promising therapeutics from hypothesis to clinical trials.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in AI/ML or related fields (computer science, machine learning, data science, applied mathematics, statistics) with 2+ years of proven experience
• Deep expertise in sophisticated mathematical frameworks including Bayesian inference, uncertainty quantification, information theory, causal inference, graph neural networks, and related methodologies that advance the field of agentic reasoning
• Proficiency with agentic frameworks (LangGraph, DSPy, mem0) and deep learning platforms (PyTorch, TensorFlow), and extend these tools for novel scientific applications
• Exceptional Python programming skills, capable of architecting scalable solutions that bridge innovation and production deployment
• The ability to lead small teams of researchers to achieve success in their work.

Nice To Haves

• Understanding of drug discovery pipeline and familiarity with biological data types
• Strong understanding of statistics and applicable methods to validate model performance
• Familiarity with cloud hosting solutions (ex. AWS and/or Azure)

Responsibilities

• Pioneer breakthrough multimodal AI systems that synthesize scientific data into actionable scientific insights which accelerate drug discovery
• Architect next-generation agent memory systems that establish how AI retains knowledge and makes context-aware decisions, creating persistent intelligence that evolves across the entire discovery-to-development pipeline
• Define the future of AI reliability in R&D by orchestrating groundbreaking research in uncertainty quantification and establishing new standards for trustworthy AI-driven scientific reasoning
• Shape the scientific vision as an inspiring leader, translating emerging AI/ML frontiers into transformative applications while mentoring teams to push the boundaries of what's possible in computational drug discovery
• Drive scientific validation and impact by rigorously benchmarking AI agents against top human experts and state-of-the-art methods, with the opportunity to publish paradigm-shifting findings in premier venues.

Benefits

• Vacation –120 hours per calendar year
• Sick time - 40 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Colorado –48 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Washington –56 hours per calendar year
• Holiday pay, including Floating Holidays –13 days per calendar year
• Work, Personal and Family Time - up to 40 hours per calendar year
• Parental Leave – 480 hours within one year of the birth/adoption/foster care of a child
• Bereavement Leave – 240 hours for an immediate family member: 40 hours for an extended family member per calendar year
• Caregiver Leave – 80 hours in a 52-week rolling period
• Volunteer Leave – 32 hours per calendar year
• Military Spouse Time-Off – 80 hours per calendar year

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree