Postdoctoral Scientist – AI/ML

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at jnj.com.

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Job Description:

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine is recruiting a Postdoctoral Scientist – AI/ML to join the Data, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (DDSAI) organization for a two-year fixed-term position. In this role, you will advance cutting-edge AI/ML approaches, biological sequence modeling, and generative AI technologies to address critical challenges in drug discovery and therapeutic design. This position can be based in Beerse, Belgium; Madrid, Spain; Cambridge, MA; Spring House, PA.

At Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, we are working to create a world without disease by transforming lives through innovative approaches to prevent, intercept, treat, and cure disease. We bring together leading scientific talent, breakthrough technologies, and deep therapeutic expertise to develop the next generation of medicines. Through collaboration and innovation, we strive to improve health outcomes for patients around the world.

Within DDSAI, our teams develop innovative AI/ML solutions that accelerate the discovery and development of next-generation therapeutics. We are seeking a highly motivated and innovative Postdoctoral Scientist to work at the intersection of advanced AI/ML and drug discovery. The role focuses on advancing foundation models, deep generative models, and representation learning approaches for biological sequences and related modalities, while establishing lab-in-the-loop workflows that tightly integrate AI-guided design with experimental validation. By leveraging large-scale and complex biological datasets, the candidate will generate novel scientific insights, develop predictive and optimization frameworks, and contribute to impactful applications across the drug discovery pipeline. A successful candidate should demonstrate strong expertise in modern AI/ML methods, a proven ability to develop and rigorously evaluate new methodologies, and a track record of publishing research in leading AI/ML conferences and peer-reviewed journals.

Key Responsibilities

• Conceive, develop, and validate innovative AI/ML approaches to address challenging problems in drug discovery and design.
• Design and implement foundation models, deep generative models, and representation learning approaches for biological sequences and related biological modalities.
• Establish and execute lab-in-the-loop workflows that integrate AI-driven design with wet-lab experimentation, accelerating iterative optimization and biological validation.
• Analyse and interpret large-scale, complex biological datasets to generate novel scientific insights and hypotheses.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams across computational biology, machine learning, and experimental sciences to translate methodological advances into impactful drug discovery applications.
• Clearly communicate complex technical methodologies and present findings to diverse audiences and stakeholders to support informed decision-making.
• Follow standard processes for documentation and maintaining an up-to-date code repository.
• Draft manuscripts and disseminate research findings internally and externally (e.g., publishing in top ML conferences).

Qualifications

• Ph.D.* in Computer Science, Statistics, Electrical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related quantitative major. (*PhD completed within the last 3 years or to be completed within the next 6 months.)
• Strong technical expertise in AI/ML, with demonstrated excellence in one or more areas, such as sequence modeling, geometric deep learning, deep generative model (e.g., diffusion and flow matching), and foundation model, supported by a strong publication record in leading AI/ML conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR).
• Solid working knowledge of deep-learning architectures and techniques (e.g., transformers, graph neural networks, geometric deep learning, etc.).
• Experience in developing foundation models and/or generative models of biological sequences in related applications, such as representation learning, property prediction, and optimization, is a plus.
• Proficiency with one or more programming languages, preferably Python, and proficiency in one or more AI frameworks such as PyTorch.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to present analytical results on behalf of the project team in a multi-functional setting, contextualizing how the work fits within the broader project.
• This position will be based at any of the following locations: Beerse, Belgium; Madrid, Spain; Cambridge, MA; Spring House, PA.

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The anticipated base pay range for this position is:

Benefits:

In addition to base pay, we offer the following benefits*: an annual bonus with set target (% of pay) depending on pay grade / location, where the actual amount is based on the employees’ and companies’ performance of the previous calendar year, or sales commissions. Moreover, we offer vacation days, parental leave for a minimum of 12 weeks, bereavement leave, caregiver leave, volunteer leave, well-being reimbursement, programs for financial, physical and mental health. We also offer service anniversary and recognition awards, and subject to the terms of their respective plans, employees - and in some location’s eligible dependents - can participate in several insurance plans. For more information, visit Employee benefits | Supporting well-being & career growth | Johnson & Johnson Careers.

*This is for informative purposes only. Amounts and actual benefits may vary by location and are subject to change.