Associate Principal AI & ML Engineer – Evinova

It currently takes over 10 years and $1.3B to develop a drug. More than 70% of that investment goes into clinical trials, yet only ~10% of candidates make it from Phase I to approval. Evinova - a new health-tech business within the AstraZeneca Group — is here to change the math. We use advanced algorithms and GenAI to aim high: boosting clinical trial success by 20%, cutting development time by 3 years, and halving study costs.

As Associate Principal AI & ML Engineer, you will prototype and build the systems that make those targets real—blending forecasting, optimization, and evidence synthesis to drive transparent and actionable recommendations. You’ll integrate multi‑source data - historical signals, external context, and real‑world data (RWD) - into production systems to improve the process of designing clinical trials and increase their probability of success.

If you're motivated by meaningful problems and comfortable working outside your existing experience, you'll thrive here. We're looking for generalists with software, data science and ML skills — people who are genuinely curious, committed to continuous learning, and eager to rethink how clinical trials are designed. We value people who build with depth and intention, not just wrap LLM API calls.

What You'll Bring (Essential Requirements):

• Foundation
  • Ph.D. or equivalent professional experience in a quantitative field (Mathematics, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or similar)
  • Previous industry experience building applied ML/AI systems that have shipped as part of a product and driven measurable business impact.
• Machine Learning & AI
  • Deep experience across classical ML, deep learning, and NLP
  • Hands-on work with generative AI – including prompt engineering, context engineering and multiagent systems and working with managed endpoints (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock) and open-weight models (Hugging Face ecosystem)
  • Knowledge of agentic design patterns - planning, memory, tool use/function calling, RAG - with practical experience in evaluation and guardrails appropriate for regulated environments
• Engineering & Delivery
  • Strong Python development skills with production sensibilities (testing, observability, documentation)
  • Experience with containers, APIs, and async services (Docker, FastAPI) and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions)
  • Awareness of architectural patterns in deploying applied ML/AI systems in cloud (AWS).
• Communication & Collaboration
  • Ability to translate complex technical work into clear narratives for both technical and non-technical stakeholders
  • Experience sharing knowledge with peers and contributing to engineering and data science standards and best practices.

Nice to Have (Desirable Requirements):

• Domain knowledge- familiarity with drug development, clinical trial design, or real-world data (EHR, claims, prescriptions)
• RAG pipelines at depth- experience building secure, compliant ingestion and retrieval systems with provenance tracking, including web automation, parsing, and document processing
• Agent frameworks- hands-on experience with multi-agent orchestration tools (e.g., Google ADK, LangGraph, CrewAI, or equivalents)
• AI-augmented development- effective use of agentic coding assistants (Copilot, Cursor) to accelerate delivery
• Open source or community contributions- published packages, conference talks, or internal framework development
• Startup-pace experience- comfort with ambiguity, rapid iteration, and wearing multiple hats

Location: St Pancras London (3 days per week / 60% overall)

Salary: Competitive + Excellent Benefits!

Why Evinova (AstraZeneca)?

Evinova draws on AstraZeneca’s deep experience developing novel therapeutics, informed by insights from thousands of patients and clinical researchers. Together, we can accelerate the delivery of life-changing medicines, improve the design and delivery of clinical trials for better patient experiences and outcomes, and think more holistically about patient care before, during, and after treatment.

Evinova represents a unique opportunity to deliver meaningful outcomes with digital and AI to serve the wider healthcare community and create new standards for the sector. Join us on our journey of building a new kind of health tech business to reset expectations of what a bio-pharmaceutical company can be.

Are you already imagining yourself joining our team? Good, because we can’t wait to hear from you.

When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we unleash bold thinking with the power to inspire life-changing medicines. In-person working gives us the platform we need to connect, work at pace and challenge perceptions. That’s why we work, on average, a minimum of three days per week from the office. But that doesn't mean we’re not flexible. We balance the expectation of being in the office while respecting individual flexibility.

Our mission is to build an inclusive and equitable environment. We want people to feel they belong at AstraZeneca and Alexion, starting with our recruitment process. We welcome and consider applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of characteristics. We offer reasonable adjustments/accommodations to help all candidates to perform at their best.