Associate Principal AI& ML Engineer – Evinova in London

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 build the AI engines that make those targets real—blending forecasting, optimization, and evidence synthesis to drive transparent and actionable recommendations. You’ll transform multi‑source data—historical signals, external context, and real‑world data (RWD)—into production‑grade intelligence and connect those insights into automated authoring and planning workflows, accelerating timelines, reducing cost, and raising the probability of success. If you are a solid coder with hands-on experience of developing AI agentic solutions, modern deep learning skills, strong AWS fundamentals, and a bias for rapid learning you can make a real impact here. This is a hands-on role, expect around 80% time spent on coding.

What the role involves:

• Build sophisticated GenAI applications, Machine Learning models, and Optimization solutions tailored to life sciences, taking them from initial PoC through to impactful applications.
• Deliver high‑quality, production‑ready code on AWS; stand up robust APIs, orchestration endpoints (MCPs), and flexible data pipelines with strong lineage and observability.
• Transform external signals and real‑world data (RWD) into trusted, actionable evidence for ML/DL and agentic systems.
• Collaborate in a dynamic ecosystem where AI, Product, Strategy, and UX intersect.
• Act as a key translator, connecting cutting-edge AI capabilities with real-world pharmaceutical requirements to deliver meaningful digital transformation.
• Communicate technical concepts and results clearly and effectively to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Keep pace with industry advancements by reviewing academic papers and attending conferences.

SKILLS AND CAPABILITIES NEEDED

• Ph.D. or equivalent experience in a relevant field (such as Mathematics, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics etc).
• Previous demonstrated experience building applied ML/AI systems, including deep learning, NLP, and generative AI.
• Proven track record of developing creative and novel AI solutions with measurable business impact (e.g. cost, accuracy, adoption, latency).
• Knowledge of agentic design patterns (planning, memory, tool use/function calling, RAG) with evaluation, and guardrails.
• Proficiency in Python; PyTorch or TensorFlow; Hugging Face (Transformers/PEFT); experience with managed endpoints (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock) and at least one agent framework for tool orchestration.
• Ability to build secure, compliant ingestion and retrieval pipelines with provenance, hands-on experience with web automation, parsing, and document processing to enable high-quality RAG.
• Strong AWS fundamentals to deploy production workloads (model hosting, data, orchestration), including robust APIs/orchestration endpoints and observable data pipelines.
• Experience with containers and services (Docker, FastAPI, async patterns), CI/CD (GitHub Actions), and security/privacy-by-design suitable for regulated environments.
• Comfortable leveraging GenAI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc.) to accelerate development.

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience with real-world data (Electronic Health Records, claims data, pharmacy & prescription databases).
• Knowledge of drug development and prior pharma experience.
• Reinforcement learning and LM fine-tuning; TypeScript or AWS CDK.
• Contributions to open-source or internal frameworks.

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.

We know that regulators, healthcare professionals, and care teams at clinical trial sites do not want a fragmented approach. They do not want a future where every pharmaceutical company provides its own, different digital solutions. They want solutions that work across the sector, simplify their workload, and benefit patients broadly. By bringing our solutions to the wider healthcare community, we can help build more unified approaches to how we all develop and deploy digital technologies, better serving our teams, physicians, and ultimately patients.

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. This means we’re opening new ways to work, pioneering cutting-edge methods, and bringing unexpected teams together.

Interested? Come and join our journey.

So, what’s next?

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

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. If you have a need for any adjustments/accommodations, please complete the section in the application form.