Merck KGaA Posted August 20, 2026

Principal Agentic AI Engineer

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel FULL_TIME
Data & Digital Principal
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Merck KGaA 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

Work Your Magic with us!

Ready to explore, break barriers, and discover more? We know you’ve got big plans – so do we! Our colleagues across the globe love innovating with science and technology to enrich people’s lives with our solutions in Healthcare, Life Science, and Electronics. Together, we dream big and are passionate about caring for our rich mix of people, customers, patients, and planet. That's why we are always looking for curious minds that see themselves imagining the unimaginable with us.

United As One for Patients, our purpose in Healthcare is to help create, improve and prolong lives. We develop medicines, intelligent devices and innovative technologies in therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Neurology and Fertility. Our teams work together across 6 continents with passion and relentless curiosity in order to help patients at every stage of life. Joining our Healthcare team is becoming part of a diverse, inclusive and flexible working culture, presenting great opportunities for personal development and career advancement across the globe.

Your role:

In this role, you will design, prototype, and deliver agentic AI solutions within the Advanced Data Science team in the Data Sciences organization. You will apply large language models and emerging agentic AI methods to transform complex scientific and operational workflows across pharmaceutical Research & Development.

Working closely with scientists, business stakeholders, software engineers, machine learning experts, and the Lead Applied AI Engineer, you will translate use-case requirements into functioning AI applications. You will develop agents capable of reasoning over enterprise knowledge, interacting with scientific tools and data sources, executing multistep tasks, and collaborating effectively with users through human-in-the-loop workflows.

You will experiment with and optimize approaches for agent design, reasoning and planning, context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, memory, tool use, and workflow orchestration. You will evaluate alternative models, prompts, retrieval strategies, and agent configurations, using structured testing and user feedback to improve solution quality, reliability, latency, and cost.

You will contribute across the complete use-case delivery lifecycle, from rapid prototyping and user demonstrations through validation and production readiness. You will develop modular and reusable components while ensuring that solutions include appropriate error handling, traceability, evaluation, and safeguards for their intended use.

You will work in close partnership with software engineering and IT teams to integrate agentic workflows with approved enterprise platforms, data services, and applications. Your focus will be on the design and implementation of use-case-specific AI behaviour, complementing IT ownership of shared platforms, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and production operations.

Staying at the forefront of developments in foundation models, agentic systems, and AI engineering, you will rapidly assess emerging approaches and translate those with practical value into solutions that improve scientific decision-making and productivity across R&D.

Location: Israel

Who you are:

You hold a master’s degree or PhD in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, software engineering, or a related quantitative discipline.

You have a minimum of 5 years professional experience in AI engineering, machine learning, natural language processing, or the development of AI-enabled applications

You have hands-on experience developing applications using large language models, generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, or agentic AI approaches.

You understand core agentic-system concepts, including reasoning and planning, tool use, workflow orchestration, memory, state management, and human-in-the-loop interaction.

You have practical experience with prompt and context engineering, document retrieval, embedding-based search, structured data integration, and the grounding of model outputs in trusted sources.

You possess strong programming skills in Python and experience building modular, tested, and maintainable software.

You are familiar with APIs, model-serving interfaces, databases, version control, automated testing, containerization, and cloud-based development environments.

You have experience evaluating AI systems using quantitative metrics, structured test cases, model comparisons, and feedback from users or subject-matter experts.

You understand the limitations and failure modes of large language models and can implement appropriate controls, fallback mechanisms, and evaluation approaches.

You are comfortable working iteratively with users, moving rapidly from an initial problem statement to a functioning prototype and progressively improving it based on evidence and feedback.

You possess strong analytical and problem-solving skills and are motivated by applying emerging AI technologies to complex scientific and business challenges.

You collaborate effectively across scientific, engineering, product, and IT teams and can communicate technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences.

Experience in pharmaceutical R&D, healthcare, life sciences, or another regulated environment is considered an advantage.

What we offer: We are curious minds that come from a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. We believe that this variety drives excellence and innovation, strengthening our ability to lead in science and technology. We are committed to creating access and opportunities for all to develop and grow at your own pace. Join us in building a culture of inclusion and belonging that impacts millions and empowers everyone to work their magic and champion human progress!

Apply now and become a part of a team that is dedicated to Sparking Discovery and Elevating Humanity!

Job details

Seniority
Principal
Function
Data & Digital
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Employment type
FULL_TIME

How this role compares

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

We currently track 250 comparable Principal Data & Digital roles across 49 biopharma companies.

250Comparable roles tracked
223Currently active
49Companies hiring similar roles
25Countries represented

Salary context

75 of 250 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)

Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.

This roleSubject Not listed on this posting
Highest disclosed · Director, AI and Machine Learning for Biology · Novartis $194,600/yr – $361,400/yr
Peer group range $103,700 – $278,000 (median $218,500)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 250 comparable roles

United States115
India55
United Kingdom16
Spain13
Germany7
Poland6

+ 19 more countries

Seniority mix

250 of 250 peers have a known seniority level

Senior118
Director74
Principal58

Therapeutic area mix

5 of 250 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Neuroscience2
Cardiovascular / CVRM1
Oncology1
Immunology1

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.

60%similar
Merck KGaA Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Merck KGaA Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Merck KGaA Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
50%similar
Merck KGaA Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Senior
Same function Adjacent seniority Same country
45%similar
Pfizer Groton, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority
45%similar
Novartis Cambridge (USA), United States Principal
Same function Same seniority

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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.

60%
Principal AI Research Scientist - Biomedical Imaging & Digital Pathology
Merck KGaA · Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
50%
Senior Agentic AI Engineer
Merck KGaA · Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel · Senior
Function Therapeutic area Adjacent seniority Country
45%
Principal Statistical Programmer - Internal Medicine
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) · Warren, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
45%
Senior Principal Scientist/Principal Scientist, Real-World Evidence & Disease Genomics
Sanofi US Services Inc. · Cambridge, United States · Principal
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.