Director Data Science

Director, Data Science 

PsychoGenics (PGI) is a preclinical Contract Research Organization (CRO) with expertise in Central Nervous System (CNS) and orphan disorders. Our mission is to provide the best validated disease models and comprehensive preclinical capabilities to help companies discover the next generation of treatments for severely disabling CNS and orphan disorders and to reduce the attrition rate in clinical development. We are committed to innovation, research, and development that can improve the health of people worldwide by translating advanced scientific research into effective, innovative medications. Our expertise spans data collection in state-of-the-art facilities to advanced data analysis by a team of mathematicians, computer engineers, and data scientists. 

At PsychoGenics, we bring together people with extraordinary talent and experience, united by the strength of our values. We operate with integrity and pride in our mission and continue to build a culture where we win together while providing a valuable service to society. 

Role: 

We are seeking am Associate Director/Director, Data Science to lead machine-learning initiatives and services to support preclinical neuroscience and pharmacology studies. This role will integrate pharmacology and drug discovery principles to help drive our mission of creating life-saving medicines. The successful candidate will work with software engineers and data scientists to build, validate, and maintain PGI technological platforms and ML/analytics tools to support PGI’s preclinical research objectives. The successful candidate will support other teams’ statistical and analytical needs. 

Job Responsibilities: 

• Lead ML projects from problem framing to model development and validation. • Develop advanced ML methods/workflows and implement them to meet company goals. 

• Build scalable, reliable pipelines for ML-based analytics; improve automation and robustness of data processing/analysis. 

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams and communicate results through clear visualizations and scientific narratives. 

• Lead teams and manage data-driven projects delivering tools and technologies for drug discovery and development. 

• Provide technical leadership (and, at higher level, project leadership/mentoring) across initiatives. 

• Work with other departments in the analysis and interpretation of complex data projects. 

• Leverage pharmacology knowledge to inform data analysis and model development. 

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate findings into actionable drug discovery insights. 

• Stay updated with the latest industry trends, technologies, and advancements in data science and pharmacology. 

• Collaborate in the maintenance and development of PGI’s data collection systems, including sensor and processing modules, to improve system performance. Required Qualifications: 

• Advanced degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Statistics, Pharmacology, or related fields. 

• Minimum of 10 years of industry experience in a data science role within the pharmaceutical / biotech industry, with good understanding of pharmacology and drug discovery processes. 

• Clear evidence of a good fit with biomedical science, neuroscience, pharmacology, drug discovery, bioinformatics, or related experimental domains. 

• Strong hands-on ML expertise for analytical tools development and evaluation using experimental data. 

• Experience in developing and implementing deep learning and cutting-edge ML techniques. 

• Demonstrated ability to deliver reproducible, maintainable ML solutions suitable for operational use/production environments. 

• Strong programming skills (Python-based ML stack expected). 

• Experience with Pandas, Keras, TensorFlow, PyTorch, NumPy, SciPy, Scikit-Learn or Matplotlib. 

• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, and an ability to deeply understand the "why" and "how" of what we are working on. 

• Exceptional problem-solving skills and attention to detail. 

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Preferred Qualifications: 

• Experience with data systems automation, sensors/data capture, or production ML systems. 

• Prior leadership of cross-functional technical projects. 

• Experience with Jupiter Notebooks. 

• Experience with Java, CUDA, Cython, C#/C++. 

• Industry software development experience building distributed systems, cloud computing systems, or automated data pipelines. 

• Experience with storage and/or database systems. 

• Comfort working on large codebases and software systems. 

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or Google Cloud) for data storage and analysis, and containerized services. 

• Familiarity with rich sensor data (e.g., analog sensors, camera)