Senior Data Scientist, Imaging Foundation Models Full-time

Senior Data Scientist

Within DAGS, our AI/ML team drives innovation across disease areas by building biologically grounded and interpretable imaging pipelines. In Immunology, digital pathology plays a critical role in understanding tissue level immune mechanisms and supporting companion diagnostics. We are seeking a Senior Data Scientist with strong expertise in computer vision and biomedical imaging to develop scalable imaging foundation models and interpretable pipelines for immunology and oncology biomarker discovery.

What You'll Do

• Develop and train imaging foundation models for histopathology, with a focus on immune‑relevant tissue and cellular patterns.
• Build segmentation driven and cell‑centric pipelines (e.g., immune cell typing, spatial organization, microenvironment analysis).
• Design interpretable modeling workflows that link image derived features to biological hypotheses and clinical endpoints.
• Apply zero‑shot and weakly supervised learning methods to extract immune signals from H&E and IHC data.
• Collaborate closely with immunologists, pathologists, and translational teams to ensure biological relevance and interpretability.
• Support imaging biomarker development efforts, including applications toward companion diagnostics.
• Contribute to platform level imaging strategies, QC standards, and best practices within DAGS.
• Share findings through internal forums, publications, and scientific collaborations.

You Should Have

• PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, AI/ML, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Genetics & Genomics, Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Pharmaceutical Science, or related STEM field with 0+ years postdoctoral experience or Master's degree with 4+ years of industry experience.
• Strong expertise in computer vision and medical image analysis and/or multimodal data.
• Experience building and/or applying models for segmentation, detection, and representation learning, ideally in histopathology.
• Familiarity with modern deep learning architectures (e.g., transformers, vision foundation models).
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch.
• Strong interest in immunology and tissue‑based biomarker discovery.
• Ability to communicate complex technical ideas to multidisciplinary scientific partners.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Familiarity with clinical or translational imaging biomarker programs.
• Publications in venues such as MICCAI, CVPR, NeurIPS, ISBI, or related journals.

Required Skills:

Biomedical Imaging, Computer Science, Computer Vision, Data Science, Data Segmentation, Deep Learning, Digital Pathology, Foundation Models, Image Analysis, Machine Learning (ML), Medical Imaging Analysis, Multimodal, Multimodal Analysis, PyTorch, Representation Learning, Transformer Model, Vision Transformer (ViT)

Preferred Skills:

The salary range for this role is $144,800.00 – $227,900.00

This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs.

The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.

You can apply for this role through https://jobs.merck.com/us/en (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles' Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance