CZI is building out our AI/ML capabilities in support of our long-term mission to cure, prevent, and manage all disease by the end of the century, and the ten-year vision of unlocking the ability to digitally model human cell function. To this end, we are seeking a world-class leader for the consolidated and growing AI/ML research group who will tackle hard problems in pursuit of that vision. The leader will be responsible for setting the team direction and identifying the best approaches to building models and solutions that lead to an ability to mimic and predict cellular biology mechanisms.

Learn more about our work modes, benefits, and interview process.

The Team

The mission of the CZI Science Initiative is to support the science and technology that will help make it possible to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of the century. We support interdisciplinary teams of physicians, biologists, computational scientists, and engineers to expand our understanding of the human body and illness — the very science behind medicine. CZI fosters collaboration between scientists and engineers, develops tools and technologies, and builds support for basic scientific research. Our North Star objective is on understanding the mysteries of the cell, the fundamental building block of life. To that end, our approach is to digitally model cell function through research, advanced development, collaboration, and funding.

Some Science Initiative efforts include:

• Building software such as
• CZ cellxgene - an easy to use corpus of single-cell transcriptomics data.
• CZ ID - a metagenomics platform that delivers insights in infectious disease.
• Funding of
• Single cell biology and the application of technologies that enable multi-omics investigation at the level of cells.
• Imaging and developing tools capable of observing biological processes across spatial scales at the level of tissues, cells, and proteins.
• Doing science through
• The CZ Biohub empowering scientists to work on their riskiest, most exciting ideas.
• The CZ Imaging Institute and developing technologies to image the molecular architecture of the cell with atomic resolution.

What You’ll Do

The AI/ML Director will be a leader within CZI developing and applying state-of-the-art methods in artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve important problems in the biomedical sciences aligned with CZI’s focus on understanding the mysteries of the cell by modeling cell function. You will lead a team that will leverage datasets that are created as part of CZI’s efforts to build, fund, and do science to create models that transform our understanding of cells.

You will lead a concerted ML effort within CZI Science Technology and have the opportunity to work closely with teams of scientists, computational biologists, and engineers. You will also collaborate with other groups within CZI, CZI grantees, CZ institutes, and other external labs and organizations. Your work should inspire and enhance the production and analysis of datasets by CZ teams and collaborators. Scientific focus areas could include single cell biology, imaging, genomics, and proteomics.

• Conceive of and lead projects to solve important problems in biomedical sciences through the application of state-of-the-art methods in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• Be a leader on a diverse team that develops, deploys, & maintains innovative machine learning systems and software tools that enable the analysis and interpretation of complex and noisy biology data sets.
• Identify opportunities, create, and implement solutions with respect to complex problems/scientific questions on large scale data sets, especially using machine learning approaches, predictive models, and statistical analysis, to advance understanding of cell structures, systems, and interactions.
• Collaborate with the CZI Science Program and Technology teams to help identify problems and opportunities in the biomedical sciences that can be tackled with artificial intelligence.
• Collaborate with the CZI Science Program and Technology teams to identify and define necessary datasets.
• Summarize and present complex and highly technical problems and solutions to audiences with a wide variety of skills and domain knowledge

What You’ll Bring

• Enjoy working in a highly interactive and cross-functional collaborative environment with a diverse team of colleagues and partners
• Act as a thought leader and mentor for the AI/ML team, leading hiring, developing, and retaining people to help them develop their full potential and build new skills and abilities
• Have a passion for actively directing and managing highly skilled individuals to consistently achieve high levels of motivation, enthusiasm, inclusion, and performance
• A passion for tackling hard problems and orchestrating team activities to face the challenges involved.
• Have a Masters or PhD in computer science (focus on machine learning & data analytics), biocomputing or a related field or equivalent industry experience and at least 10 years of experience leading a research and development team
• Have demonstrated experience building and training AI/ML models to address biological or adjacent problems, and developing deep learning methods
• Have a proven track record leading teams with diverse skill sets and focused on the analysis and interpretation of complex biological data

The Redwood City, CA base pay range for this role is $323,000 - $485,000. New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range, enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on job-related skills and experience, as evaluated throughout the interview process. Pay ranges outside Redwood City are adjusted based on cost of labor in each respective geographical market. Your recruiter can share more about the specific pay range for your location during the hiring process.

#LI-Hybrid