Director and Group Head, Applied AI

Novartis Pharma Schweiz AG seeks a Director and Group Head, Applied AI in Basel to lead AI strategy and roadmap for drug discovery research, aligning priorities with scientific and business goals.

The company is looking for a leader to define and execute the applied artificial intelligence strategy and multi-year roadmap for drug discovery research. This role ensures AI initiatives align with portfolio needs, scientific opportunities, and measurable business impact while governing the AI portfolio through clear intake, prioritization, and delivery oversight.

Responsibilities

• Guide cross-functional teams to identify, prototype, benchmark, and implement suitable AI solutions.
• Develop best practices for problem framing, data readiness, benchmarking, evaluation design, and reproducible model development.
• Oversee benchmarking of foundation and task-specific models to enable transparent trade-offs and informed adoption decisions.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to scale solutions and integrate them into daily scientific decision-making.
• Establish rigorous evaluation metrics that link model performance to downstream decisions and experimental outcomes.
• Foster a culture of scientific rigor, rapid iteration, mentorship, and practical impact across teams.
• Establish strategic academic and industry partnerships to accelerate innovation, benchmarking, and technology transfer.

Requirements

• Proven track record of leading core machine learning capability development initiatives across drug discovery teams and use cases.
• Demonstrated experience with foundation model benchmarking in drug discovery applications.
• Hands-on experience applying machine learning to core drug discovery areas such as target identification or computational chemistry.
• Strong experience in large-scale model training, distributed computation, model adaptation, and deployment within machine learning operations frameworks.
• Deep curiosity and passion for biomedical sciences and therapeutic discovery, with ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly.
• Minimum of 12+ years of experience in innovation, development, deployment, and continuous support of machine learning and modeling solutions.
• Strong coding proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks, with experience using version control systems such as Git.
• Ability to manage complexity, balance priorities, and drive outcomes effectively within matrixed environments using a proactive mindset.

Nice to have

• Publications, patents, or open-source contributions demonstrating machine learning innovation and domain expertise.
• Strong curiosity for emerging technologies with pragmatic ability to apply them to real-world business challenges.

About the company

The company is dedicated to fostering an outstanding, inclusive work environment and building diverse teams that reflect the patients and communities it serves. It is also committed to providing reasonable accommodation to all individuals for any part of the recruitment process.

• Committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams representative of the patients and communities served.
• Committed to providing reasonable accommodation to all individuals for any part of the recruitment process.