Director, Research Data Science

Job Title:Director, Research Data ScienceLocation:San DiegoPosition type:FLSA:Full time ExemptDepartment:Finance ID:AI Innovation7100-2025-6Strive to Bring a Profound Difference to our PatientsAt Avidity Biosciences, we are passionate about the impact of every employee in realizing our vision of improving people’s lives by delivering a new class of RNA therapeutics. Avidity is revolutionizing the field of RNA with its proprietary AOCs, which are designed to combine the specificity of monoclonal antibodies with the precision of oligonucleotide therapies to address targets and diseases previously unreachable with existing RNA therapies. If you are a committed, solution-oriented thinker, join us in making a difference and become part of our growing culture that is integrated, collaborative, agile and focused on the needs of patients. Avidity Biosciences, Inc.'s mission is to profoundly improve people's lives by delivering a new class of RNA therapeutics - Antibody Oligonucleotide Conjugates (AOCs™). Utilizing its proprietary AOC platform, Avidity demonstrated the first-ever successful targeted delivery of RNA into muscle and is leading the field with clinical development programs for three rare muscle diseases: myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). Avidity is broadening the reach of AOCs with its advancing and expanding pipeline, including programs in cardiology and immunology through internal discovery efforts and key partnerships. Avidity is headquartered in San Diego, CA. For more information about our AOC platform, clinical development pipeline, and people, please visit www.aviditybiosciences.com and engage with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.The OpportunityWe are seeking a hands-on Research Data Science Director with expertise in genomic data science, nucleotide modeling, and RNA therapeutics to join our AI & Machine Learning team. In this role, you will be our technical development lead, leveraging cutting-edge techniques and related deep learning models along with data science methods to analyze complex genomic datasets and siRNA data, advancing the discovery and development of RNA-based therapies.  You will work at the intersection of AI, computational biology, and genomics, collaborating with cross-functional teams to develop and deploy machine learning models that drive innovation in drug discovery and therapeutic design. Reporting directly to the VP of AI/ML, this is a unique opportunity to impact our mission to deliver the next generation of transformative RNA therapeutics to patients. On the AI team at Avidity, everyone is a technical contributor, and you should be excited to build solutions to hard research questions. What You Will Contribute

• Develop, fine-tune, and apply nucleotide-focused AI models (e.g., DNABERT, Transformer-based architectures) for genomic and transcriptomic analyses.
• Analyze gene expression datasets to optimize RNA-based therapeutic designs and identify key biological patterns.
• Build machine learning models for RNA therapeutics, including applications in sequence specificity, off-target prediction, and functional validation.
• Work with multi-omics data (e.g., RNAseq, proteomics) to integrate insights into model development and therapeutic strategy.
• Collaborate with research, technical development, and clinical teams to translate AI-driven insights into actionable results.
• Lead the development of computational tools and pipelines for nucleotide data analysis.
• Stay at the forefront of AI and genomic data science, exploring novel methodologies to improve the design and delivery of RNA-based therapies.
• Partner with stakeholders to develop and drive the computational research strategy to accelerate our drug discovery process

What We Seek

• PhD in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Genomics, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent industry experience. Background and experience in the life sciences is key.
• Strong expertise in nucleotide modeling and related machine learning approaches (e.g., DNABERT, nucleotide Transformers) with 10+ years of experience.
• Proficiency in Python and machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch.
• Experience analyzing siRNA data, with a solid understanding of RNA interference and oligonucleotide design.
• Hands-on experience with multi-omics data (RNAseq, proteomics, etc.) and bioinformatics tools.
• Familiarity with genomic databases and annotation tools (e.g., ENSEMBL, UCSC Genome Browser).
• Strong problem-solving and organizational skills, with the ability to work collaboratively in a cross-functional environment.
• Strong data visualization experience focused on making results easily sharable across multiple scientific and business teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of publishing or presenting technical work.

What We Will Provide to You 

• The base salary range for this role is $237,500 - $262,500. The final compensation will be commensurate with relevant experience, skillset, internal equity, and market factors.
• Avidity offers competitive compensation and benefits, including the opportunity for annual and spot bonuses, stock options, and RSUs, as well as a 401(k) with an employer match. In addition, the comprehensive wellness program includes coverage for medical, dental, vision, and LTD and four weeks of time off.
• A commitment to learning and development, including a variety of internal programming developed by and for Avidity employees, opportunities for job-specific training offered by industry, and an education reimbursement program.

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