Director and Group Head, Applied AI

Role: Lead and oversee the Applied AI strategy and research portfolio within biomedical discovery at Novartis, focusing on accelerating drug development through advanced machine learning approaches. Responsibilities: define multi-year AI roadmap, lead multidisciplinary teams in developing, benchmarking, and deploying AI models for drug discovery; establish best practices for data readiness, model evaluation, and reproducibility; partner with engineering to scale solutions, and foster academic and industry collaborations. Requirements: 12+ years of experience in machine learning innovation, deployment, and support; proven leadership in core AI initiatives for drug discovery, especially foundation model benchmarking; hands-on expertise with target identification, computational chemistry, large-scale model training, distributed computing, and ML Ops; strong programming skills in Python and deep learning frameworks; ability to manage complex projects in matrix environments. Desirable: publications, patents, open-source contributions, and a passion for biomedical sciences. HighValue: leadership in AI/ML applied to drug discovery, foundation model benchmarking, target identification, computational chemistry, and scalable ML deployment. WorkSetup: based in Cambridge, USA; relocation support not provided; travel not specified.