Merck KGaA Posted October 22, 2026

Senior RWD Scientist

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Full time
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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.

Senior Scientist, Real-World Data & Evidence Foundations

Data, Methods & Solutions · Patient-Focused Real-World Evidence (PRWE)

Role Overview

The Senior Scientist, Real-World Data & Evidence Foundations builds the software our scientists use to run real-world evidence analyses more efficiently, and makes sure the answers are right. These are epidemiology and statistics applications: cohort builders, incidence and prevalence estimates, treatment-pattern analyses, descriptive study reports. A tool like that can run perfectly and still be wrong, if a lookback window is off or a denominator is incorrectly defined. So this role pairs software development with enough epidemiology and statistics to know what a correct result looks like. This person owns each tool’s analytical logic, its test sets and its acceptance criteria, and builds the tools themselves with agentic coding tools. They build on the company’s shared AI and data platforms, which the data science and IT teams run.

Key Responsibilities

Real-World Evidence Tools

Build epidemiology and statistics applications that scientists use directly, from a simple front end to the analysis code behind it.

Implements each tool’s analytical logic: cohort entry, lookback and follow-up windows, denominators and statistical methods, agreed with the RWE scientists who will use the output.

Write the known-answer test sets and acceptance criteria every tool must pass before release, drawn from published studies and past analyses, and rerun them whenever the data or the code changes.

Turn validated analyses and agentic workflows that work for one person into tools the function can use, for tasks like literature screening or drafting code lists, with a person checking the output before it is used.

Use agentic coding tools such as Claude Code routinely, and review what they produce as closely as a colleague’s work.

Align tools to the appropriate platforms and workstreams required (exploratory vs. regulatory submissions).

Work with the data science and IT teams that run the shared AI and data platforms when a tool needs enterprise deployment.

Work within company AI governance, and keep patient-level and licensed data out of any tool not approved for it.

Real-World Data Foundation

Build on the curated, analysis-ready data, standard cohorts and code lists that the real-world data curation team maintains

Apply the terms of each data license and data use agreement, including access controls, small-cell suppression and output checks.

Scientific & Strategic Leadership

Support the design of standardized workflows which support complex observational studies and analytical strategies.

Good understanding on how to frame research questions and define fit-for-purpose evidence approaches.

Contribute standardized workflows for evidence strategies that support development, regulatory and broader product lifecycle decisions.

Anticipate methodological and data risks and propose practical solutions.

Decision Enablement

Translate analyses into clear, actionable insights for decision-making.

Support study- and program-level decisions on evidence generation, data selection and analytical strategy.

Help ensure evidence is relevant to the question being asked and the decision it is meant to support.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Collaborate across clinical development, biostatistics, regulatory, medical, HEOR, data science and IT.

Work with IT and the enterprise data, AI and platform teams, who own the shared infrastructure, so tools meet company architecture and security standards.

Build trusted working relationships that make execution and alignment easier.

Minimum Qualifications

PhD, or a Master’s degree with equivalent experience, in epidemiology, biostatistics, statistics, computer science, data science or a related quantitative field.

8+ years in real-world evidence, epidemiology, biostatistics or health data science, including hands-on development of analytical software that other people use.

Hands-on work with claims, EHR or registry data, and knowledge of how the way it is collected shapes confounding, missingness and misclassification.

Working knowledge of the epidemiological and statistical methods used in observational research, such as cohort designs, incidence and prevalence, survival analysis and confounding adjustment.

Strong Python and SQL, written with software engineering habits such as Git, automated testing and code review. Enough R to read and port analysts’ code.

Regular hands-on use of agentic AI coding tools such as Claude Code on real projects, with the testing and review habits that keep the output trustworthy.

Clear communication of analytical and technical choices to scientists and decision makers.

Preferred Qualifications

Turning a validated analysis program into a reusable tool.

OMOP CDM and OHDSI analytics tools.

Building or evaluating LLM-based agents or workflows.

Modern web front-end development.

Experience with Israeli health data sources.

Computerized system validation (GxP) or other regulated software practice.

A publication record or open-source contributions in real-world evidence methods or tooling.

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
Senior
Function
Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Employment type
Full time

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 439 comparable Senior Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research roles across 52 biopharma companies.

439Comparable roles tracked
398Currently active
52Companies hiring similar roles
18Countries represented

Salary context

221 of 439 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
Lowest disclosed · Senior Animal Behaviorist - Primate · Labcorp $70,000/yr – $80,000/yr
Highest disclosed · Senior Principal Scientist, Quantitative Biosciences · Merck $214,100/yr – $337,000/yr
Peer group range $75,000 – $275,550 (median $165,300)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 439 comparable roles

United States332
China15
India13
United Kingdom13
Switzerland10
Belgium9

+ 12 more countries

Seniority mix

439 of 439 peers have a known seniority level

Senior226
Principal171
Associate Director42

Therapeutic area mix

48 of 439 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Immunology15
Neuroscience14
Oncology14
Cardiovascular / CVRM3
Gastroenterology1
Dermatology & Aesthetics1

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.

50%similar
Merck KGaA Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Associate Director
Same function Adjacent seniority Same country
45%similar
Merck Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America Senior
Same function Same seniority
45%similar
Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Groton, United States Senior
Same function Same seniority
45%similar
Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Groton, United States Senior
Same function Same seniority
45%similar
Roche Shanghai, Shanghai, China's Mainland Senior
Same function Same seniority
45%similar
AbbVie South San Francisco, CA Senior
Same function Same seniority

Notify me about similar jobs

Get an email when we spot other openings like this one – same job function, comparable seniority, roles you'd actually want to see.

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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.

50%
Associate Director RWD Scientist
Merck KGaA · Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel · Associate Director
Function Therapeutic area Adjacent seniority Country
45%
Senior Scientist- Analytical Research and Development
Pharmacia & Upjohn Company · Groton, United States · Senior
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
45%
Senior Scientist II – ADC Reaction Engineer
AbbVie · North Chicago, IL · Senior
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
45%
Senior DMPK-PD Project Leader
Roche · Basel, Basel-City, Switzerland · Senior
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.