Computational Program Scientist

What if… you could join an organization that creates, resources, and builds life sciences companies that invent breakthrough technologies in order to transform health care and sustainability?

Montai Health is a privately held, early-stage biotechnology company developing a platform for understanding and leveraging complex molecular interactions within organisms to solve global challenges in human health and sustainability. The company leverages a multidisciplinary approach that integrates tools ranging from machine learning and big data to multi-omics and high-throughput screening.

At Montai, we nurture a bold, spirited and leading-edge culture dedicated to strengthening human health:

• We are one team with omnidirectional trust, empowered and accountable.
• We are strong as individuals but stronger as a team and we are committed to excellence.
• We have a sense of urgency and persistence and we are crazily confident that we can make a difference.
• We need to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and be rigorous and we recognize that failure is data.
• We care for diversity in people, thought, personality, opinions, background and distinctiveness.
• We have a sense of humor to help us manage through our strategic noise.

Position Summary:

We are looking for a bioinformatics scientist to join our small and growing team of machine learning scientists & engineers. This person will work within our Computational Modeling team and collaborate with our Biology team to:

• Interface between computational modeling and experimental biology teams, gathering feedback and requirements from biological scientist users to advance model development while delivering and providing guidance on interpreting ML model outputs
• Configure and apply computational models using established deployment processes to generate and deliver program- and experiment-specific modeling results.
• Develop and enhance technical documentation for biological scientist users of ML Models. Develop and formalize processes for deploying and delivering results from these models

This person will work with and contribute to an innovative set of machine learning models and tools built on top of a robust ML engineering infrastructure. They will build valuable experience in...

• Data science and machine learning including predictive modeling (e.g. bioactivity and assay outcome prediction), representation learning (e.g. on chemical structures and biological networks), and probabilistic modeling (e.g. Bayesian statistics and uncertainty quantification for deep learning)
• ML Engineering and software development including use of distributed version control and development (e.g. on GitHub), containerized deployment (e.g. using Docker), continuous integration, and cloud computing (e.g. AWS)
• Organizational and project management skills oriented towards ML modeling within a dynamic, biotech startup environment

Required Skills/Experience:

• BS + 1 year experience or MS in bioinformatics or a related field such as biological sciences, bioinformatics, or data science with a specialization in biological applications
• Experience with functional assay development specifically for drug discovery and high throughput screening
• Familiarity with python and the python data science stack (e.g. pandas, numpy, sklearn, etc.)
• Familiarity with with data science methods including regression, supervised machine learning, and unsupervised methods such as clustering and factorization analysis
• Excellent communicator, able to interact productively with experienced biological scientists as well as machine learning engineers

Desired Skills/Experience:

• PhD and/or 3+ years industry experience in drug discovery and pharmaceuticals
• Experimental experience with a range of in vitro and in vivo methods such as liquid handler-assisted screening automation, mammalian in vivo models, transcriptomics and next-generation sequencing (NGS), and imaging readouts
• Familiarity with domain-specific python cheminformatic and bioinformatic packages (e.g. biopython, RDkit, Deepchem)
• Awareness of domain-specific machine learning and statistical modeling tools including deep learning structure-based and sequence-based property prediction and network analysis models (e.g. graph neural network, LSTM, CNN, and transform models) is a plus

Personal Characteristics:

• Agility: Ability to work in a high energy organization with evolving goals and deliverables
• Results Oriented: Self-motivated, curious, accomplishes goals with minimal oversight
• Communication: Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, ability to work well with colleagues from diverse backgrounds and cultures
• Authenticity: Ability to voice their opinion and provide insight to the broader team, even when holding a minority or “out of the box” opinion. Ability to thrive with input from a cross-functional team while remaining the unquestioned scientific expert
• Team player: Desire to routinely interact with and mentor team members

Location: Cambridge, MA

More About Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category life sciences companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flagship Labs unit, applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in over $50B in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has deployed over $2.2B in capital toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $18B of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 41 transformative companies, including Axcella Health (NASDAQ: AXLA), Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Indigo Ag, Kaleido Biosciences (NASDAQ: KLDO), Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), Sana Biotechnology, Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Sigilon Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SGTX).

Flagship Pioneering and our ecosystem companies are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.   Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Flagship Pioneering and its affiliated Flagship Lab companies (collectively, “FSP”) do not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to FSP or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Flagship Pioneering’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of FSP, and FSP will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.