Principal Data Scientist - Scientific.AI

Driving lasting impact and building long-term capabilities with our clients is not easy work. You are the kind of person who thrives in a high performance/high reward culture - doing hard things, picking yourself up when you stumble, and having the resilience to try another way forward. In return for your drive, determination, and curiosity, we'll provide the resources, mentorship, and opportunities you need to become a stronger leader faster than you ever thought possible. Your colleagues—at all levels—will invest deeply in your development, just as much as they invest in delivering exceptional results for clients. Every day, you'll receive apprenticeship, coaching, and exposure that will accelerate your growth in ways you won’t find anywhere else. When you join us, you will have: Continuous learning: Our learning and apprenticeship culture, backed by structured programs, is all about helping you grow while creating an environment where feedback is clear, actionable, and focused on your development. The real magic happens when you take the input from others to heart and embrace the fast-paced learning experience, owning your journey. A voice that matters: From day one, we value your ideas and contributions. You’ll make a tangible impact by offering innovative ideas and practical solutions, all while upholding our unwavering commitment to ethics and integrity. We not only encourage diverse perspectives, but they are critical in driving us toward the best possible outcomes. Global community: With colleagues across 65+ countries and over 100 different nationalities, our firm’s diversity fuels creativity and helps us come up with the best solutions for our clients. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from exceptional colleagues with diverse backgrounds and experiences. World-class benefits: On top of a competitive salary (based on your location, experience, and skills), we provide a comprehensive benefits package to enable holistic well-being for you and your family. You will tackle complex data challenges, develop advanced models, and create impactful solutions to optimize client performance. You’ll mentor others and collaborate with world-class talent in a dynamic environment that fosters innovation and growth. Your work will be split between developing new internal knowledge, building AI and machine learning models & pipelines, supporting client discussions, prototype development, and deploying directly with client delivery teams. You will bring distinctive statistical, machine learning, and AI competency to complex client problems. You will play a pivotal role in the creation/dissemination of cutting-edge knowledge and proprietary assets. You will work in a multi-disciplinary team and build the firm’s reputation in your area of expertise. You will ensure statistical validity and outputs of analytics, AI/ML models, and translate results for senior stakeholders. You will write optimized code to advance our Data Science Toolbox and codify analytical methodologies for future deployment. You’ll be working in one of our offices in North America in our Life Sciences practice as a part of McKinsey’s global Scientific AI team helping to answer industry questions related to how AI can be used for therapeutics, chemicals & materials (including small molecules, proteins, mRNA, polymers, etc.). You will work with cutting edge AI teams on research and development topics in a start-up like environment, serving as a Principal Data Scientist in a technology development and delivery capacity. You will be responsible for managing others while also translating technical outputs into actionable recommendations for senior leaders. You will also present findings and implications to executive stakeholders.

Master’s degree with 8+ years or PhD degree with 7+ years of relevant experience in statistics, mathematics, computer science, or equivalent experience with experience in research ML experience with causality, Bayesian statistics & optimization, survival analysis, design of experiments, longitudinal analysis, surrogate models, transformers, Knowledge Graphs, Agents, Graph NNs, Deep Learning, computer vision Strong programming experience in python (R, C++ optional) and the relevant analytics libraries (e.g., pandas, numpy, matplotlib, scikit-learn, stats models, pymc, pytorch/tf/keras, langchain) Proven experience applying machine learning techniques to solve business problems Experience leading teams of at least 3 people Experience with version control (GitHub) Ability to write production code and object-oriented programming, and conduct detailed code reviews when needed Proven track record of end-to-end ownership of independent workstreams Proven experience advising external parties and/or functions Exceptional time management to meet your responsibilities in a complex and largely autonomous work environment Good presentation and communication skills (both verbal and written), with the ability to explain complex analytical concepts to people from other fields/non-technical stakeholders