Senior Ai Impact & Applied Innovation Specialist

Role: Senior AI Impact and Applied Innovation Specialist Location: Cambridge UK Salary: Competitive + Excellent Benefits Are you ready to translate AstraZeneca's frontier AI capabilities into concrete impact for the organisation? The Applied AI Research team, part of the AI Science Innovation (AISI) group within Enterprise AI (EAI), sits at the intersection of frontier AI research and oncology R orchestrate the delivery of these projects. Establish frameworks for quantifying impacts of AI projects and measuring impact for the business and implement these for active cross-functional projects. Stakeholder Communication and Leadership: Communicate AI science priorities, programme status, and strategic recommendations to senior stakeholders across EAI, Oncology R act as the scientific bridge between AISI strategy and execution-layer teams, ensuring that frontier insight translates into actionable work and that delivery blockers are visible to leadership. Essential Requirements Advanced degree (PhD preferred; Master's with substantial relevant experience considered) in a quantitative biological or computational discipline: computational biology, bioinformatics, machine learning, statistics, or a closely related field. Demonstrated experience applying AI/ML methods to clinical, genomic, transcriptomic, or other biomedical data in a drug development or translational research context. Strong scientific literacy across the oncology drug development pipeline, from target identification and preclinical biology through biomarker development, clinical trial design, and Phase 1/2 decision-making. Familiarity with the current landscape of AI in drug development, including foundation models for biological and clinical data, perturbation prediction, digital pathology, and agentic research systems. Demonstrated ability to frame rigorous scientific or clinical questions and translate them into tractable AI problems with well-specified success criteria. Experience evaluating the quality of AI models in a scientific or clinical context, including understanding of validation standards, confounding, shortcut learning, and the distinction between prognostic and predictive signals. Track record of working effectively across multidisciplinary teams, including both technical AI/ML specialists and experimental or clinical scientists. Excellent written and oral scientific communication, including the ability to present technical material to non-technical senior audiences and to distil complex landscapes into actionable recommendations. Comfort with ambiguity and a bias for action; able to make well-reasoned prioritisation decisions under uncertainty and to advocate for them. Desirable Requirements Direct experience with generative AI and agentic systems applied to life sciences, particularly for clinical insights. Direct experience with multimodal foundation models, particularly for computational pathology, for response prediction, subtyping and other common research tasks. Direct experience with multimodal data integration, for example combining clinical, genomic, transcriptomic, imaging, and/or pathology data. Familiarity with CRISPR functional genomics, perturbation prediction, or virtual cell approaches and their application to target discovery or combination prioritisation. Familiarity with AI benchmarking methodologies and the challenges of evaluating foundation models on clinically meaningful tasks. Experience with AI prioritisation or portfolio management methodologies, including problem identification, value assessment, and structured decision frameworks. A record of scientific contribution (e.g., peer-reviewed publications), ideally including AI/ML or clinical AI venues, that establishes credibility with technical, clinical, and scientific audiences. 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. Join us in our unique and ambitious world. Date Posted: 28-Oct-2026 Closing Date: 06-Nov-2026 Our mission is to build an inclusive and equitable environment. 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.