Scientific Fellow, AI Safety, R&D Data Science – Digital Health
Johnson & Johnson
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Hybrid
Location: Cambridge • California • Massachusetts • United States
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Salary
💰 $196,000 - $342,700 per year
About the role
- Shape DSDH and IM R&D strategy for safe and trustworthy AI by defining multi-year research priorities, capability roadmaps, and investment recommendations for AI safety across discovery, development, clinical, and regulatory workflows.
- Represent AI safety as a senior scientific voice in function- and enterprise-level councils/working groups; set standards and priorities for safe scaling of GenAI and agentic systems, and provide technical leadership on safety principles and implementation for agentic and autonomous systems.
- Research, embed and implement AI safety ‑by ‑design principles into the development of foundation models, AI and generative AI applications, and agentic systems across R&D use cases.
- Partner directly with AI and quantitative scientists across IM R&D, as well as with technical leads in JJT to identify potential failure modes, risks, appropriate levels of autonomy and human oversight.
- Ensure monitoring captures unsafe behaviors, not only performance drift.
- Design and execute safety-focused models and evaluations, including but not limited to stress testing for hallucinations, edge cases, and failure propagation in multi-step reasoning and agent workflows.
- Provide technical leadership for AI safety in regulated environment, covering use cases, e.g. regulatory documentation for AI-enabled R&D processes and submissions, autonomous agents in GxP environments, etc.
- Influence internal policy and external best practices by contributing to guidance documents/points-to-consider for safe GenAI and agentic systems in pharma R&D, including participation in expert working groups and advisory panels.
- Develop business cases to secure investment for AI safety capabilities and lead execution of funded initiatives.
- Drive J&J innovation in the field, leading to high visibility publications in top-tier AI conferences and journals, patents around AI safety in generative AI, reasoning, multi-agent systems, etc.
- Establish a sustained mentorship program for AI safety across IM R&D, including coaching on technical approaches and trends, publication strategy, and cross-functional influence.
- Actively contribute to IM R&D Fellow Community by showcasing technical excellence in various internal and external events.
Requirements
- Required PhD or equivalent advanced degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, or a related field.
- Minimum of 10 years of post-academic, industry experience.
- Proven track record and strong hands-on experience with modern AI systems, including foundation models, multimodal generative AI, large reasoning models or agentic systems.
- Extensive experience with AI safety, robustness, reliability, or evaluation in high-impact or high-stakes domains.
- Demonstrated ability to reason about system-level behavior, failure modes, and risk, beyond model accuracy and robustness alone.
- Excellent coding and software development capabilities.
- Experience working in highly interdisciplinary and matrixed environments spanning AI, data science, engineering, and life science.
- Strong communication skills and ability to influence AI model and systems design without formal authority.
- Experience in the Life Sciences, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical or Medical Tech sector is preferred.
Benefits
- Vacation –120 hours per calendar year
- Sick time - 40 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Colorado –48 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Washington –56 hours per calendar year
- Holiday pay, including Floating Holidays –13 days per calendar year
- Work, Personal and Family Time - up to 40 hours per calendar year
- Parental Leave – 480 hours within one year of the birth/adoption/foster care of a child
- Bereavement Leave – 240 hours for an immediate family member: 40 hours for an extended family member per calendar year
- Caregiver Leave – 80 hours in a 52-week rolling period
- Volunteer Leave – 32 hours per calendar year
- Military Spouse Time-Off – 80 hours per calendar year
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard Skills & Tools
AI safetyfoundation modelsmultimodal generative AIlarge reasoning modelsagentic systemssoftware developmentrisk assessmentsystem-level behavior analysisevaluation methodologiesstress testing
Soft Skills
technical leadershipcommunicationinfluencementorshipcollaborationinterdisciplinary teamworkcoachingstrategic thinkingpublication strategycross-functional influence
Certifications
PhD in Computer SciencePhD in Artificial IntelligencePhD in Machine LearningPhD in Data Science