Principal Scientist (AI & Autonomous Discovery Systems)

Location: Spring House, Pennsylvania, United States; onsite with no remote option

Annual base pay: $117,000–$201,250, plus eligibility for an annual performance bonus.

Company

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine develops healthcare solutions and transformational medicines across therapeutic areas including oncology, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, immunology, neuroscience, and infectious disease.

What you will do

• Build AI-enabled discovery workflows spanning target discovery, molecular and property prediction, molecular design, experiment planning, assay optimization, and multimodal data interpretation.
• Define the technical vision and scalable multi-agent architecture for AI-driven laboratory orchestration and human-guided autonomous discovery.
• Connect AI models, scientific applications, data platforms, laboratory systems, instruments, robotics, and cloud services into continuously learning Design-Make-Test-Learn workflows.
• Develop intelligent scientific systems integrating experimental data, literature, domain knowledge, and predictive multimodal AI models for hypothesis generation, experimental design, causal reasoning, active learning, and optimization.
• Help establish standards for AI governance, safety, observability, reliability, auditability, data governance, security, and responsible AI.
• Partner with scientists and engineers, mentor technical staff, and communicate results through presentations, publications, patents, conferences, and collaborations.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in biomedical, electrical, or chemical engineering, computer science, machine learning, computational biology, bioinformatics, computational chemistry, or a related quantitative discipline.
• At least 3 years of post-graduate experience applying advanced AI/ML in scientific, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, healthcare, or industrial research.
• Strong expertise in agentic AI, scientific computing, software engineering, machine learning, generative AI, foundation models, and multimodal AI.
• Proficiency in Python and frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or equivalent platforms.
• Experience architecting enterprise-scale AI platforms, scientific software systems, or production-grade AI applications.
• Experience with drug discovery or clinical development and the ability to collaborate with domain scientists and experimental teams.

Nice to have

• Experience with human-guided autonomous or closed-loop scientific workflows, active learning, laboratory automation, robotics, LIMS, ELN, and scientific data platforms.
• Experience adapting, fine-tuning, evaluating, and deploying biological, molecular, multimodal, or scientific foundation models.
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge graphs, MLOps or LLMOps, cloud computing, distributed systems, APIs, and interoperability standards.
• Familiarity with LC, LC/MS, NMR, laboratory information systems, and pharmaceutical or process chemistry instrumentation.

Culture & Benefits

• Cross-functional work across data science, discovery science, technology, and therapeutic-area organizations.
• Opportunities to build external visibility through scientific publications, patents, conferences, and collaborations.
• Medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability, business accident, and group legal insurance may be available.
• Retirement pension and 401(k) savings plans may be available.
• Vacation, sick time, holiday pay, and personal and family time are provided under applicable policies.