Associate Principal Informatician for Biological Insights

at  AstraZeneca

Are you a quantitatively-minded scientist looking to apply your data science skills to discover new therapeutic targets and derive novel biological insights? At AstraZeneca, we turn ideas into life changing medicines. Working here means thinking big and working together to deliver impact from our contributions that make the impossible a reality.
We have an exciting opportunity to join our Data Sciences and Quantitative Biology team that works as part of the Discovery Sciences organisation, within BioPharma R&D and contribute as an Associate Principal Informatician for Biological Insights. This position will be based at our vibrant R&D site in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Discovery Sciences work with all AstraZeneca therapy areas to deliver candidate drugs into late-stage clinical development. The Data Sciences and Quantitative Biology team is a multi-disciplinary team of data scientists with the purpose of providing quantitative insights to biology. In partnership with our experimentalist colleagues, we provide computational analysis and solutions to enable and drive our drug discovery efforts forward.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

As an Associate Principal Informatician for Biological Insights, you’ll be using data science and informatics to derive insights from complex biological data to identify new therapeutic targets and insights that help progress therapeutic projects to deliver medicines. You will be responsible for translating intricate biological questions into informatics queries and formulating testable hypotheses. An important part of the role is to be an interface between data scientists, clinicians, biologists and therapy area leaders to ensure the effective use of informatics resources. You will be communicating results and hypotheses clearly to stakeholders and explaining their confidence and limitations clearly. You will also oversee the development and rollout of new features for the user interfaces connected to internal information sources and be responsible for the ongoing maintenance.

ESSENTIAL FOR THE ROLE

We expect you to demonstrate a passion for driving scientific questions and being capable of receiving and analysing input from multiple fields and deciding on focused course of action. You have a consistent track record of delivering analytical solutions for business or academic needs. You are able to work independently and have a positive, result-oriented and problem-solving attitude. We also believe that you enjoy teamwork, have a collaborative nature and will be an encouraging colleague to all.

• PhD, or equivalent, in bioinformatics, mathematics, computer science, statistics, engineering or the life sciences
• In-depth demonstrated experience in the modelling of complex datasets in the relevant informatics application domains
• Experience of NoSQL/Graph database architectures, such as Neo4J, as well as complex database querying (ideally in Cypher) and working in a cloud or cluster environment
• Good understanding of the design, development, optimization, and scaling of informatics applications and solutions
• Understanding of drug discovery, molecular biology, cell biology, and human physiology, ontologies, data management, machine learning, statistical modelling
• Experience of manipulating and analysing large high dimensionality structured and unstructured datasets, drawing conclusions, defining recommended actions, and reporting results across stakeholders
• Excellent written and verbal communication, business analysis, and consultancy skills

DESIRABLE FOR THE ROLE

• Demonstrated experience with drug discovery
• Experience with leveraging graph approaches for decision making
• Proven track record of publishing relevant results and tools in peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and other scientific proceedings.
• Experience in novel methods development and application