Novartis Posted August 13, 2026

Lead Data Scientist, Gen-AI Expert

Shanghai (Shanghai), China Regular
Sales

Novartis is the source of truth for this posting and owns the application process. We surface normalized context and market comparison you won't find on the original listing.

About this opportunity

About the role: We are seeking a Lead Data Scientist, Gen-AI Expert to join the Data Science and Generative AI team within Data Analytics & Platform in Novartis China. In this role, you will translate high-value business questions across commercialization, medical affairs, and life sciences into scalable AI/ML and generative AI capabilities, including enterprise knowledge bases, RAG, intelligent search, reusable data pipelines, and production-grade AI engineering standards. This is an opportunity to shape governed, reusable, and business-impactful AI solutions that improve decision quality, operational efficiency, and customer experience across the commercialization organization.

Key Responsibilities:• Responsible for translating business pain points related to commercialization, medical affairs, and life sciences into clear machine learning or generative AI technical pathways, product requirements, and mid- to long-term capability roadmaps.• Deeply engage in commercialization, medical affairs, and life sciences business scenarios; work with business teams to clarify high-value questions; rapidly translate ambiguous needs into executable AI/ML technical solutions; and achieve end-to-end delivery through prototype development, PoC, business validation, and production deployment.• Lead the development of enterprise-level knowledge bases, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), intelligent search, memory systems, and reusable data pipelines, covering knowledge architecture design, document processing and indexing strategies, metadata and access management, data asset reuse, evaluation set development, quality monitoring, content governance, and continuous operation mechanisms.• Responsible for algorithm prototype design, performance optimization, model evaluation, and capability iteration for generative AI applications. Apply technologies including large language models, prompt engineering, knowledge graphs, recommendation systems, causal inference, deep learning, or multi-agent frameworks, and make engineering trade-offs across accuracy, latency, cost, traceability, and user experience to form stable, scalable, and traceable enterprise-level solutions.• Establish enterprise-level AI engineering and standardization frameworks, including model evaluation metric systems, fine-tuning processes, deployment and monitoring standards, quality tracking, risk control, and compliance assessment approaches, ensuring that AI capabilities operate safely, compliantly, and reliably in pharmaceutical industry scenarios.• Work closely with business, data, engineering, IT, compliance, legal, and external vendor teams to manage cross-functional expectations and delivery cadence; clearly communicate technical value, business impact, and return on investment (ROI) to senior stakeholders; and drive the adoption of AI culture and standardized workflows on the business side.Essential Requirements: • Master’s degree or above, preferably in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, statistics, mathematics, information management, or related disciplines; experience in healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceutical commercialization, consulting, or enterprise-level digital transformation is preferred.• More than 5 years of experience in artificial intelligence, machine learning, generative AI, data science, enterprise-level AI products, or platform engineering; full project experience from algorithm prototyping, performance optimization, and engineering deployment to continuous iteration is preferred.• Solid capabilities in frontier algorithms and models, with familiarity in large language model (LLM) applications and fine-tuning methods, including supervised fine-tuning (SFT), reinforcement learning (RL/RLHF), prompt engineering, and multi-agent collaboration frameworks, as well as an understanding of cross-disciplinary technologies such as knowledge graphs, recommendation systems, causal inference, deep learning, and multimodal AI.• Production-grade AI engineering and standardization capabilities, with familiarity in model evaluation metrics, fine-tuning processes, data pipelines, knowledge base and memory system design, deployment monitoring, quality governance, traceability management, and stability requirements for production systems.• Excellent business understanding and technical translation capabilities, with the ability to decompose complex business problems into executable functional requirements, data requirements, and system solutions; balance technical investment, business value, cost efficiency, and return on investment (ROI); and integrate internal and external data resources and partner ecosystems.• Excellent cross-functional project management, communication, and senior stakeholder influencing skills, with the ability to coordinate business, data, engineering, compliance, legal, and vendor teams; establish standardized processes in complex environments; drive the adoption of AI culture; and continuously enhance the team’s innovation capabilities.

Job details

Seniority
Not listed
Function
Sales
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
Shanghai (Shanghai), China
Employment type
Regular

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Sales role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 2393 comparable Sales roles across 138 biopharma companies.

2393Comparable roles tracked
2162Currently active
138Companies hiring similar roles
65Countries represented

Salary context

636 of 2393 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)

Peers share this role's job function. This posting doesn't list a seniority level, so peers aren't narrowed by seniority either -- the range below may span more levels than usual.

This roleSubject Not listed on this posting
Lowest disclosed · Patient Coordinator 1 (PSC) · Novartis $37,200/yr – $69,200/yr
Highest disclosed · Vice President, Head of Oncology Sales · Novartis $274,400/yr – $509,600/yr
Peer group range $53,200 – $392,000 (median $135,500)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 2393 comparable roles

United States1305
China402
India71
Japan56
Taiwan54
Germany50

+ 59 more countries

Seniority mix

956 of 2393 peers have a known seniority level

Senior437
Manager420
Director68
Associate Director11
Intern/Fellow/Postdoc9
Associate6
Executive/VP5

Therapeutic area mix

651 of 2393 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Oncology186
Cardiovascular / CVRM135
Neuroscience118
Dermatology & Aesthetics47
Vaccines & Infectious Disease41
Respiratory38
Immunology32
Rare Disease30
Gastroenterology20
Ophthalmology4

Similar opportunities

The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.

40%similar
Gilead Sciences Shanghai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd.
Same function Same country

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Zhuhai, ChinaNanning, China
40%similar
Gilead Sciences Shanghai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. Nanning, China
Same function Same country
40%similar
Gilead Sciences Shanghai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. Senior
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Urumqi, ChinaShenzhen, China
40%similar
Gilead Sciences Shanghai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd., Hangzhou Branch Wenzhou, China
Same function Same country
40%similar
Gilead Sciences Shanghai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. Changsha, China Senior
Same function Same country
40%similar
Novartis
Same function Same country

Open in 2 locations

Yantai (Shandong Province), ChinaPuyang (Henan Province), China

How we calculate "similar"

No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.

Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.

40%
Therapeutic Specialist I
Gilead Sciences Shanghai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. · Zhuhai, China · Seniority not listed
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Therapeutic Specialist II
Gilead Sciences Shanghai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd., Hangzhou Branch · Wenzhou, China · Seniority not listed
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Therapeutic Specialist I
Gilead Sciences Shanghai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. · Nanning, China · Seniority not listed
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
(高级)医药代表 /(资深)产品专员
Novartis · Puyang (Henan Province), China · Seniority not listed
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.