Director of Generative AI – Text and NLP for Research

Reference No.R2708332

Position Title: Director of Generative AI – Text and NLP for Research

Department: R&D Data & Computational Sciences

Location: Toronto

At Sanofi, we chase the miracles of science to improve people’s lives.  We believe our cutting-edge science and manufacturing, fueled by data and digital technologies, have the potential to transform the practice of medicine, turning the impossible into possible for millions of people. 

As one of Canada’s leading investors in life sciences, manufacturing and research and development, we focus on delivering new and better ways to address unmet medical needs. Our life-changing and lifesaving products are grounded in science that Canadians can trust. They empower self-care, prevent and treat diseases, and help people live better. 

Our vision for digital, data analytics and AI

Sanofi has embarked into a vast and ambitious digital transformation program. A cornerstone of this roadmap is the acceleration of its data transformation and of the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions. This has enabled us, to accelerate R&D, improve manufacturing and commercial performance, and bring novel drugs and vaccines to patients faster, all in order to improve health and save lives. 

The Digital Team at Sanofi is a unique data-driven team. We pride ourselves on being data obsessed and highly focused on using state of the art processes along with global technologies to drive impact to our solutions. We measure our insights and products based on how they perform across the globe and hold ourselves to the highest regard as our solutions can impact millions of lives. When tackling a problem, we do not just ask how we will create a solution, but how we will create a solution that reaches across the world with the best possible societal outcome. 

If you are passionate about improving the health and wellness of people across the globe using Data as your means, then you should look no farther than the Digital Team here at Sanofi. Join us on our journey in enabling Sanofi’s Digital Transformation through becoming an AI first organization.

Who You Are:

You are a dynamic ML / AI expert with either industry or academic experience in leading a team focused on the development, use and adoption of generative AI for biomedical text and sequence data. We are looking for people who can use and extend large LLMs for various applications, are comfortable with relevant engineering and scaling issues needed for use of this technology in a large company but also understand the biology and the underlying methods and algorithms. In our experience the best candidate for this position are people who are passionate about the use of machine learning and AI to unlock the mysteries of science and change the way biomedical research is performed.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead a team of AI/ML and software engineers to evaluate, develop, extend and apply LLMs and generative AI algorithms to various use cases in Research and Development (clinical) in a large pharma company.

• Develop, implement, test and refine advanced ML methods for the processing, analysis, modeling integration and visualization of large scale biomedical text data.

• Use AI and ML methods for knowledge extraction from text and other structured data and for integrating this data with other types of structure and unstructured data using multi-modal genAI methods.

• Use AI and ML methods for text and report generation for clinical and regulatory applications.

• Be in close contact with life and medical sciences researchers to discuss project specifications, needs, data, testing and use of the products being developed.

• Work closely with the leading generative AI companies (our vendors) to make sure our products are state of the art and up to date.

• Work with developers, engineers, and MLOps to deliver AI/ML solutions to product teams.

Key Requirements:

• PhD or MSc in computer science, machine learning, computational biology or related area with at least 6 years of experience in working on the development of methods related to deep NN, LLMs, generative AI or related topics.

• Deep technical understanding of the theory and practice of deep neural networks both in terms of training and inference.

• Experience in the use of AI for NLP and text analysis and in use cases downstream of NLP LLMs.

• Demonstrated ability to lead a team of data scientists and generate software solutions that are of practical use.

• Hands-on AI/ML modeling experience of complex datasets combined with strong understanding of theoretical foundations of AI/ML.

• Experience developing deployable code and deploying models in product-focused development under an agile environment.

• Comfortable working in cloud and high-performance computing environments (e.g. AWS, GCP, Databricks, Apache Spark).

• Excellent written and verbal communication, business analysis, data visualization and data storytelling skills.

• Strong interest in the use of AI in the life and medical sciences to improve patient lives.

Pursue Progress

Discover Extraordinary

Better is out there. Better medications, better outcomes, better science. But progress doesn’t happen without people – people from different backgrounds, in different locations, doing different roles, all united by one thing: a desire to make miracles happen. So, let’s be those people.

Watch our ALL IN video and check out our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion actions at sanofi.com!

Sanofi is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. Our goal is to attract, develop and retain highly talented employees from diverse backgrounds, allowing us to benefit from a wide variety of experiences and perspectives. We welcome and encourage applications from all qualified applicants.  Accommodations for persons with disabilities required during the recruitment process are available upon request.

Thank you in advance for your interest.

Only those candidates selected for interviews will be contacted.

Follow Sanofi on Twitter: @SanofiCanada  and on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sanofi

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At Sanofi diversity and inclusion is foundational to how we operate and embedded in our Core Values. We recognize to truly tap into the richness diversity brings we must lead with inclusion and have a workplace where those differences can thrive and be leveraged to empower the lives of our colleagues, patients and customers. We respect and celebrate the diversity of our people, their backgrounds and experiences and provide equal opportunity for all.