Senior Director, Integrative Biology- Oncology Discovery
About The Position
Johnson & Johnson is seeking a Senior Director to lead its Oncology Integrative Biology team and provide scientific and strategic leadership for computational biology within Oncology Discovery across disease-area strongholds. The team integrates biological evidence and emerging computational approaches to advance target identification and validation, generate precision medicine hypotheses, and deepen pathway biology across pre-portfolio and portfolio programs. It will pioneer AI-enabled discovery biology in close partnership with disease-area teams, DPDS, Data Science, Translational Oncology, and other discovery partners. The Senior Director will serve on the Discovery Senior Leadership Team and as a scientific partner to Oncology Discovery leaders, DASL, Translational Research, and discovery project teams. The role uses large-scale biological datasets to generate actionable insights and inform drug discovery strategy; builds a high-performing computational biology capability; establishes fit-for-purpose computational strategies across the discovery portfolio; and ensures computational insights become clear biological hypotheses and decisions. The leader will also implement and drive AI Native workstreams supporting Oncology Discovery. The integrative discovery team is expected to grow to up to 10 FTE over the coming years.
Requirements
- Ph.D. or equivalent advanced degree in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Systems Biology, Genetics/Genomics, Biostatistics, Data Science, or a related discipline.
- Deep expertise in cancer biology and oncology drug discovery.
- 12 or more years of relevant industry experience.
- Significant computational biology leadership experience, with a track record of scientific impact, team development, and influence across multidisciplinary discovery teams.
- Demonstrated expertise applying statistical and computational methods to complex genomics and multi-omics data.
- Ability to translate computational results into testable biological hypotheses and clear recommendations for experimental scientists and senior decision-makers.
Nice To Haves
- Experience or skills in big data management, data reporting, developing others, drug discovery development, inclusive leadership, molecular diagnostics, pharmaceutical microbiology, project reporting, regulatory affairs management, risk management, scientific research, stakeholder engagement, standard operating procedures, strategic thinking, and sustainability.
Responsibilities
- Define and execute the computational biology strategy for Oncology Discovery, aligned with therapeutic-area priorities and portfolio needs across multiple therapeutic modalities.
- Lead computational approaches for target identification and validation, disease segmentation, mechanism-of-action understanding, and biomarker hypotheses.
- Integrate human tumor, patient-derived, multi-omics, and functional genomics data to generate mechanistic insights and experimentally testable hypotheses in cancer biology.
- Advance machine learning, AI, network biology, predictive modeling, and multimodal data integration for oncology discovery questions.
- Partner with data science, AI/ML, informatics, and technology teams to develop scalable analytical approaches and evaluate emerging methods and platforms.
- Champion rigorous, reproducible, and interpretable computational science that produces biologically meaningful and experimentally testable hypotheses.
- Embed computational thinking and AI early in discovery programs and translate biological questions and quantitative insights into experimental and portfolio decisions.
- Establish evidence frameworks for evaluating targets and therapeutic hypotheses using insights across programs and datasets.
- Communicate complex computational findings in clear biological and strategic terms to discovery teams and senior leadership.
- Recruit, lead, mentor, and develop computational biologists, fostering scientific excellence, innovation, collaboration, and understanding of cancer biology.
- Set priorities and deploy computational resources against high-impact scientific questions.
- Build partnerships across Oncology Discovery, Translational Research, Data Science, AI/ML, Precision Medicine, and other R&D functions.
- Monitor advances in cancer genomics, functional genomics, single-cell and spatial biology, computational biology, AI/ML, and drug discovery.
- Establish collaborations with academic investigators, biotechnology companies, technology providers, and other external partners.
- Represent the organization at scientific conferences and through publications and other external scientific interactions.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
Ph.D. or professional degree
