Senior Data Scientist

About Norstella

Norstella is a premier and critical global life sciences data and AI solutions provider dedicated to improving patient access to life-saving therapies. Norstella supports pharmaceutical and biotech companies across the full drug development lifecycle — from pipeline to patient. Our mission is simple: to help our clients bring therapies to market faster and more efficiently, ultimately impacting patient lives.

Norstella unites market-leading brands - Citeline, Evaluate, MMIT, Panalgo, Skipta and The Dedham Group and delivers must-have answers and insights, leveraging AI, for critical strategic, clinical, and commercial decision-making. We help our clients:

• Accelerate the drug development cycle
• Assess competition and bring the right drugs to market
• Make data driven commercial and financial decisions
• Match and recruit patients for clinical trials
• Identify and address barriers to therapies

Norstella serves most pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the world, along with regulators like the FDA, and payers. By providing critical proprietary data supporting AI-driven workflows, Norstella helps clients make decisions faster and with greater confidence. Norstella’s investments in AI are transforming how data is consumed and decisions are made, disrupting inefficient legacy workflows and helping the industry become more efficient, innovative, and responsive to patient needs.

Job Description

The Team

Our dedicated Data Science team is at the forefront of revolutionizing pharma intelligence and how patients gain access to life-saving therapies. Armed with cutting-edge technology and a passion for innovation, we leverage the vast landscape of data to extract actionable insights that drive informed decision making.

Our unique collaborative approach fosters a dynamic synergy between data science, product development, pharmaceutical industry experts, and engineering. Our deep expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced statistical modelling, combined with our domain knowledge, enables us to deliver comprehensive solutions that empower our clients to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving industry. We have delivered multiple products live to customers, with many more in development.

Responsibilities

In this role as a Senior Data Scientist, you will:

• Collaborate with product partners and others to identify new opportunities to apply AI / ML to our content and products
• Conduct research and identify AI / ML algorithms and methods to solve specific business problems
• Implement rigorous testing and evaluation of potential solutions; review indicative results and proof-of-concepts with multi-disciplinary teams as part of customer-led product development
• Deploy your solutions as production-grade microservices in collaboration with engineering and DevOps teams
• Contribute towards common data science platforms and data assets
• Stay up-to-date, constantly learning about advances in the field, and deliver periodic presentations to internal teams on these developments

As a senior-level scientist, you will primarily be responsible for one major release at a time with a high degree of individual ownership. While not all research leads to successful deployed systems, past successes have seen a general availability launch typically ~6 months from project start. Our solutions have used a wide range of approaches, including: agentic systems and model context protocol (MCP) servers, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), classical machine learning, knowledge graphs, and simply well-designed data transformations and business logic – our focus is on solving problems rather than the technology used.

Requirements

• Graduate degree in a STEM field such as Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics, or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of experience developing AI / ML applications and data driven solutions
• Excellent knowledge of Python and core data science libraries such as pandas, scikit-learn, LangChain, etc.
• Experience with LLMs, e.g. foundation model APIs, prompt engineering, retrieval augmented generation
• Substantial depth and breadth across state-of-the-art AI / ML techniques such as Generative AI, NLP, Deep Learning, etc.
• Understanding of CS fundamentals, computational complexity, and algorithm design
• Ability to engineer and deploy well-architected software packages
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, ability to independently own and execute a project holistically at a high level
• Experience mentoring junior team members

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep expertise in engineering agentic AI systems
• Knowledge of the healthcare / pharma domain and experience applying AI to healthcare data
• Experience with AWS, especially ECS, Bedrock, SageMaker, serverless compute and storage
• Ability to prototype PoC webapps with familiarity across the full stack
• Expert usage of AI coding tools and workflows

Benefits

• Health Insurance
• Provident Fund
• Life Insurance
• Reimbursement of Certification Expenses
• Gratuity
• 24x7 Health Desk

Our guiding principles for success at Norstella

01: Bold, Passionate, Mission-First

We have a lofty mission to Smooth Access to Life Saving Therapies and we will get there by being bold and passionate about the mission and our clients. Our clients and the mission in what we are trying to accomplish must be in the forefront of our minds in everything we do.

02: Integrity, Truth, Reality

We make promises that we can keep, and goals that push us to new heights. Our integrity offers us the opportunity to learn and improve by being honest about what works and what doesn’t. By being true to the data and producing realistic metrics, we are able to create plans and resources to achieve our goals.

03: Kindness, Empathy, Grace

We will empathize with everyone's situation, provide positive and constructive feedback with kindness, and accept opportunities for improvement with grace and gratitude. We use this principle across the organization to collaborate and build lines of open communication.

04: Resilience, Mettle, Perseverance

We will persevere – even in difficult and challenging situations. Our ability to recover from missteps and failures in a positive way will help us to be successful in our mission.

05: Humility, Gratitude, Learning

We will be true learners by showing humility and gratitude in our work. We recognize that the smartest person in the room is the one who is always listening, learning, and willing to shift their thinking.

Norstella is an equal opportunities employer and does not discriminate on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, gender reassignment, race, color, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, disability or age. Our ethos is to respect and value people’s differences, to help everyone achieve more at work as well as in their personal lives so that they feel proud of the part they play in our success. We believe that all decisions about people at work should be based on the individual’s abilities, skills, performance and behavior and our business requirements. Norstella operates a zero tolerance policy to any form of discrimination, abuse or harassment.

Sometimes the best opportunities are hidden by self-doubt. We disqualify ourselves before we have the opportunity to be considered. Regardless of where you came from, how you identify, or the path that led you here- you are welcome. If you read this job description and feel passion and excitement, we’re just as excited about you.

All legitimate roles with Norstella will be posted on Norstella’s job board which is located at norstella.com/careers. If a role is not posted on this job board, a candidate should assume the role is not a legitimate role with Norstella. Norstella is not responsible for an application that may be submitted by or through a third-party and candidates should proceed with extreme caution if a third-party approaches them about an open role with Norstella. Norstella will never ask for anything of value or any type of payment during or as part of any recruitment, interview, or pre-hire onboarding process. If you are aware of or have reason to believe a job posting purportedly for a role with Norstella is fraudulent or otherwise not authorized by Norstella, please contact the Company using the following email address:ApplicationHelp@norstella.com.

Key skills/competency

The Senior Data Scientist role at Norstella involves leveraging AI/ML to revolutionize pharma intelligence. Key skills include advanced AI/ML techniques (Generative AI, NLP, Deep Learning), Python, core data science libraries (pandas, scikit-learn, LangChain), LLM experience (prompt engineering, RAG), CS fundamentals, algorithm design, software engineering for deployment, and strong communication and stakeholder management. Experience in healthcare/pharma and AWS is preferred.