Post Doctoral Researcher – Generative AI and Agentic Reasoning for Synthetics Development

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 https://www.jnj.com

Job Function:

Career Programs

Job Sub Function:

Post Doc – Data Analytics & Computational Sciences

Job Category:

Career Program

All Job Posting Locations:

Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium, Mechelen, Antwerp, Belgium, Turnhout, Antwerp, Belgium

Job Description:

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (J&J IM) is recruiting for the role of Post Doctoral Researcher – Generative AI and Agentic Reasoning for Synthetics Development. The location for this role includes Beerse, Belgium; Leiden, the Netherlands; High Wycombe, the UK; Neuss, Germany; Zug, Switzerland. Remote work options may be considered on a case-by-case basis and if approved by the Company.

J&J IM develops treatments that improve the health and well-being of people worldwide. Research and development areas encompass oncology, cardiovascular and retina disorders, immunology, and neuroscience. Our goal is to help people live longer and healthier lives. We have produced and marketed many first-in-class prescription medications and are poised to serve the broad needs of the healthcare market – from patients to practitioners and from clinics to hospitals. To learn more about J&J IM, please visit https://www.jnj.com/.

The Machine Intelligence (MI) team of Data Science and Digital Health (DSDH) AI/ML is seeking a highly motivated and forward-thinking scientist with a primary research focus of agentic systems for automated planning and problem-solving, specifically in the domain of Chemical, Manufacturing, and Controls (CMC). The candidate will help devise novel data science methodologies to use large-scale chemistry and manufacturing knowledge through the development of sophisticated large language model (LLM) agents to improve chemical process development, analytical development, and drug product development.

Key Responsibilities:

• Partner with research colleagues to devise compelling decision-making solutions by extracting knowledge from structured and unstructured chemistry and manufacturing data to make insights actionable.
• Develop, validate, and apply LLM-based solutions using cutting-edge methodologies to automate the planning and execution of solutions for scientific challenges in support of efforts relating to synthetics manufacturing.
• Serve as a domain expert within the field by articulating to team members emerging approaches and methodologies within the AI/ML (e.g. causal reasoning, intent classification, etc.) with a clear understanding of their practical applications within the industry.
• Demonstrate ability to publish results in leading journals and conferences.

Required qualifications:

• A Ph.D. degree in AI/ML or a related field (ex. computer science, machine learning, data science, applied mathematics, statistics) acquired within the last 3 years.
• Proficiency with basic and sophisticated NLP techniques (ex. word2vec, RNNs, transformers, neural networks, BERT, GPT, LangGraph, DSPy) and development frameworks (ex. TensorFlow, PyTorch, Hugging Face, spaCy, NLTK).
• Experience with natural language inference, named entity recognition, ontology mapping, graph data structures, graph analytics, etc.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages – preferably Python and/or R.
• Positive and motivated demeanor with the ability to work both independently and in a diverse, multi-disciplinary team.

Preferred (“nice-to-have”) qualifications:

• Understandings of a related chemistry field (e.g. biochemistry, analytical chemistry, organic chemistry, industrial chemistry, cheminformatics)
• Strong understanding of statistics and applicable methods to validate model performance.
• Familiarity with cloud solutions (ex. AWS and/or Azure) and graph platforms (ex. Neptune, Neo4J)

Johnson & Johnson is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.