Senior Clinical Research Scientist

Do you have the passion to join the fight against cancer and improve the lives of millions? Do you want to help ensure every patient can access the best possible diagnostic and treatment decisions? If so, join our team at Optellum and help us shape the cancer care of tomorrow!

About us

We are a fast-growth AI start-up seeking to solve one of the biggest problems in healthcare: early interception and treatment of lung disease, starting with the deadliest, lung cancer. Our vision is for every lung cancer patient to be treated at the earliest stage and cured. As a company, we promise our team members:

• High impact and rewarding work.
• Professional development opportunities: grow your knowledge of diagnostics and lung cancer.
• Opportunities to connect with serial entrepreneurs, world-leading AI experts, as well as key opinion-leading clinical experts around the world.
• Competitive salary and benefits.
• Flexible working hours from the outset, including the opportunity for hybrid working.

Our initial product is the world’s first AI-powered clinical decision support software for early diagnosis of lung cancer, which enables every clinician, in every hospital, to manage their patients in the optimal way.

About the role

You will work within the multidisciplinary Clinical Evidence team, which is a mix of medical and technical personnel, on the following workstreams:

• Statistical analysis
  • Perform descriptive statistics for value dossiers, papers, presentations, proposals, and marketing materials.
  • Calculate performance (e.g., AUC, sensitivity, specificity) and clinical utility measures.
  • Handle study power and sample-size calculations within the context of study design and development.
  • Ability to use and re-fit models typically used in healthcare (logistic regression, decision trees, GLMMs, etc.), including implementing novel methods from publications.
  • Own the data analysis for ongoing research projects.
  • Write and maintain code for large dataset organisation and sampling.
  • Select datasets to answer particular scientific questions, requiring a detailed understanding of existing available datasets, parameters, and clinical requirements.
  • Liaise with the internal medical team to help support their workflows, and help bring their medical understanding to the rest of the company.
• Clinical studies and trials
  • Assist in clinical trial design and execution as part of the work supporting Optellum’s range of current and future products, across multiple countries.
  • Manage partner sites in compiling and submitting documents for ethics clearance/IRB, data use agreements, and trial management documentation.
  • Run check-in meetings for scientific studies, and project-manage remote sites to meet our research objectives.
  • Create research protocols with partner sites to support data collection and research at their institutions.
  • Run technical quality checks on incoming data, and pre- and post-processing of datasets prepared for the machine learning teams.
  • Manage data platforms for HIPAA-compliant data collection and processing.

About you

We are looking for somebody who is excited to work in a healthcare setting and who has strong communication skills with both technical and clinical colleagues/collaborators.

• Knowledge of medical statistics: you have a grasp of statistical techniques and terminology, and are familiar with sensitivity/specificity, ROC and AUC analysis, power calculations, etc.
• Written and spoken communication skills: You are concise yet effective in tailoring a message to the audience in English.
• Python programming: you are proficient in the use of Python to effectively import, clean, and format data.
• Data modelling and understanding: you have a proven track record of analysing and publishing novel scientific results on large datasets in a real-world setting.
• Excellent attention to detail: You pride yourself on your ability to spot crucial errors in data, yet you are able to prioritise progress over perfection.
• Ownership mindset: you have a willingness to learn “on the job”, as well as handle tight deadlines and multiple simultaneous responsibilities to get things done.

Qualifications

You have a minimum of a postgraduate degree (MSc, MRes, etc.) in a field with a high quantitative component, e.g., Statistics, Informatics, Physics, or you can show that your background has a similar mathematical rigour. Alternatively, you have a background in medicine, experience working in hospital environments, and a strong track record in technical publications.

Initial full-time availability, starting August 2026 or before. Right to work in the UK. Resident in the UK. Able to perform hybrid working with at least 2 days per week onsite in Oxford.

The following would be considered a plus:

• Experience with DICOM data, or experience with hospital imaging infrastructure (PACS and reporting systems).
• Experience working with clinical studies, ethics approval, or protocol-writing.
• Experience with project management and familiarity with Jira and similar tools.

Optellum is an equal opportunity company.