Associate Director Quantitative Genetics Scientist (Billerica MA)

Work Your Magic with us! Start your next chapter and join EMD Serono.

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.

This role does not offer sponsorship for work authorization. External applicants must be eligible to work in the US. 

Your Role: 

You will lead our human quantitative genetics strategy, working with scientists and clinicians in our neurology and immunology programs at all pipeline stages (target identification, target validation/assessment, safety de-risking, patient selection, indication selection and expansion, biomarker selection, in-licensing due diligence). 

To enhance the impact of genetics on our pipeline, you will: 

• Create a strategy for data acquisition and access, determining which publicly available and licensed resources (population biobanks, disease-specific cohorts, multi-ethnic datasets) will most effectively support our current and envisioned pipeline. 

• Ensure we use the right human genetics methods at the right time. You'll identify the right methods, both the old standards and new methods from recent literature, implementing them in our internal and linked platforms. 

• Perform genetic safety assessments for pipeline targets, including loss-of-function carrier phenotyping, phenome-wide association analysis, and Mendelian randomization to anticipate mechanism-based adverse events and on-target toxicity. 

• Provide rapid genetic due diligence for in-licensing and business development targets (~20-25 per year), assessing target-disease association, genetic safety signals, direction of effect, and competitive positioning. 

• Integrate genetic evidence with multi-omic data (proteomics, transcriptomics, eQTL/pQTL) for systems-level target validation and mechanism-of-action confirmation. 

• Support pharmacogenomic analyses for dose optimization, PK/PD modeling, and patient stratification strategies to enhance clinical trial design. 

• Create and communicate standards for the strength of human genetic evidence, including clear green-flag/red-flag frameworks for target nomination and portfolio decisions. 

• Contribute genetic features to probability-of-success models and target prioritization scoring to support portfolio-level decision-making. 

• Automate genetics tools and reporting to support both quantitative experts and disease biologists. Focus on quick turnaround settings such as early target screening, in-licensing due diligence, and safety assessment. Integrate with the agentic AI platform for scalable genetic reviews. 

• Work with engineering teams to develop interactive dashboards and visualizations to communicate genetic evidence to project teams, leadership, and due diligence committees. 

• Ensure that our human genetics tools and reporting are linked to internal decision support frameworks and to internal AI platforms. 

• Employ best practices from reproducible research to create a flexible yet FAIR data landscape and high-quality code infrastructure. 

• Collaborate with other data scientists in drug discovery/development program teams to ensure that the right questions are asked and answered. 

• Educate scientists across the R&D organization on the available methods and possibilities from human genetics. 

Who You Are 

Minimum Qualifications:

• You have substantial expertise in genetics and are comfortable working both on strategic questions as well as hands-on implementation.

• You have PhD in statistical genetics, computational biology, human genetics, or a related quantitative field. 

• Minimum 6 years relevant experience beyond PhD. 

• Demonstrated experience applying computational genetics to complex disease, with relevance to neurology and/or immunology. 

• Deep understanding of a wide range of human genetics methods, including GWAS and downstream analyses (e.g., fine-mapping, enrichment, colocalization, eQTL/pQTL mapping, PRSs, Mendelian randomization, direction of effect determination, loss-of-function and gain-of-function analysis) as well as variant interpretation. 

• Strong experience with large scale biobank datasets such as the UK Biobank, All of Us, and familiarity with disease-specific and multi-ethnic cohorts. 

• Experience with multi-omic data integration (genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics) for target validation and mechanism-of-action studies. 

• Experience applying machine learning and AI methods to genomic and multi-omic datasets. 

• Strong quantitative and programming skills (e.g., Python and R in Unix/HPC environments, including biobank trusted research environments). 

• Proven ability to translate genetic analyses into clear, actionable recommendations for scientific and portfolio decisions, including in-licensing and safety assessments. 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Experience in pharmaceutical or biotech R&D, particularly in genetics-informed target selection, safety de-risking, or clinical development support. 

• Familiarity with pharmacogenomics and its application to dose optimization and PK/PD modeling. 

• Experience building automated analysis pipelines, dashboards, or agentic AI workflows for genetic evidence generation. 

• Track record of working with cross-functional teams including biologists, clinicians, and business development professionals. 

Location: On-site Billerica MA

Pay Range for this position: $131,300 - $216,600 

The offer range represents the anticipated low and high end of the base pay compensation for this position. The actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level of experience, education, skills, and other job-related factors. Position may be eligible for sales or performance-based bonuses. Benefits offered by the Company include health insurance, paid time off (PTO), retirement contributions, and other perquisites. For more information click here.

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!