Senior Data Scientist - Drug Discovery

Your new company
You will be joining an innovative biopharmaceutical company who have an excellent reputation for Research & Development. They have been investing heavily within their Bioinformatics & Data Science capabilities over the last few years and are continuing to expand their teams as well as their technology.
They are looking to add someone to their team who can help drive drug discovery and development efforts through utilising advanced Bioinformatics and Data Science approaches for aspects such as personalised medicine and biomarker development.

Your new role
This is a contract position (with good home working flexibility) initially lasting 12 months but with potential to extend, working closely with a cross-functional team of R&D Scientists, Bioinformaticians, medics and statisticians. You will be developing and applying a variety of Data Science and ML approaches to analyse large scale NGS and other omics data sets and support drug discovery and development efforts by suggesting novel targets and approaches.

This position will be focused on new target identification and validation work across their biologics portfolio, especially for antibody engineering and discovery and be part of a well-established and experienced research and Data Science team within the company's early discovery section.

Main responsibilities will include:

• Hands-on analysis of omic and genetic/genomic data sets, eg gene expression and transcriptomic data
• Helping develop new scripts / tools / pipelines and approaches for R&D projects, either using classical computational biology approaches or Machine Learning (eg regression, boosting, graph based approaches, etc)
• Look for and implement new approaches for the group's R&D work, eg by incorporating new data sets
• Help develop new functionality and versions of existing tools and platforms
• Work closely with stakeholders across R&D, eg drug discovery and development team leads to advise on potential drug targets
• Provide insight and ideas on potential drug discovery strategies and approaches
• Hands-on programming in R and / or Python, eg for model development

What you'll need to succeed

• BSc/MSc/PhD (or equivalent experience) in bioinformatics, computational biology, data science, biology, computer science, statistics or a relevant discipline.
• Track record of working with genomic, NGS or multi-omic data sets (ideally from clinical samples or drug discovery focused projects)
• Knowledge / experience of drug discovery or development, preferably within a pharmaceutical, biotech or CRO is preferred, but not essential
• Skilled in programming languages such as python or R.
• Knowledge / hands-on experience with Machine Learning and/or predictive modelling approaches
• Experience using machine learning methods and statistical models is again a plus
• Strong communication skills with the proven ability to relay information effectively and efficiently, both to computational and experimental scientists.
• Experienced working collaboratively with teams on project work.

Experience of working with antibody discovery, development or engineering (or having a good understanding of antibody biology) would be an advantage, but is not essential, as is any exposure to LLM / NLP

What you'll get in return
An exciting opportunity to work with one of the leading global players developing novel medicines and having a real impact on future patients around the world.
The role also allows for a good home working balance, offers a generous pay rate and the chance to really develop your skills within a fast-paced R&D setting.

What you need to do now
If you're interested in this role, click 'apply now' to forward an up-to-date copy of your CV, or call us now. If this job isn't quite right for you but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion on your career.
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