Senior Applied AI & ML Engineer - Evinova

It currently takes over 10 years and $1.3B to develop a drug. More than 70% of that investment goes into clinical trials, yet only ~10% of candidates make it from Phase I to approval. Evinova - a new health-tech business within the AstraZeneca Group—is here to change the math. We use advanced algorithms and GenAI to aim high: boosting clinical trial success by 20%, cutting development time by 3 years, and halving study costs.

As Senior Applied AI&ML Engineer, you will prototype and build the systems that make those targets real - blending scientific knowledge, ML and agentic systems to drive transparent and actionable recommendations. You’ll integrate multi‑source data - historical trials and scientific datasets into production systems to improve the process of designing clinical trials and increase their probability of success.

If you're motivated by meaningful problems and comfortable working outside your existing experience, you'll thrive here. We're looking for generalists with scientific backgrounds and some software, data science and ML skills — people who are genuinely curious and think scientifically, committed to continuous learning, and eager to rethink how clinical trials are designed. We value people who build with depth and intention, not just wrap LLM API calls.

What You'll Bring:

Foundation

• Ph.D. or equivalent professional experience in a relevant scientific or quantitative field with industrial experience (Bioinformatics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or similar)
• Previous industry experience building applied ML/AI systems that have shipped as part of a product and driven measurable business impact.
• Domain knowledge - familiarity with drug development, clinical trial design, or real-world data (EHR, claims, prescriptions)

Machine Learning & AI

• Experience of classical ML and NLP
• Hands-on work with generative AI – including prompt engineering, context engineering and multiagent systems and working with managed endpoints (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock) and open-weight models (Hugging Face ecosystem)
• Knowledge of agentic design patterns - planning, memory, tool use/function calling, RAG - with practical experience in evaluation and guardrails appropriate for regulated environments
• Experience working with scientific datasets/ literature.

Engineering & Delivery

• Strong Python development skills with production sensibilities (testing, observability, documentation)
• Experience with containers, APIs, and async services (Docker, FastAPI) and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions)
• Awareness of architectural patterns in deploying applied ML/AI systems in cloud (AWS).

Communication & Collaboration

• Ability to translate complex technical work into clear narratives for both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Experience sharing knowledge with peers and contributing to engineering and data science standards and best practices.

Nice to Have:

• RAG pipelines at depth - experience building secure, compliant ingestion and retrieval systems with provenance tracking, including web automation, parsing, and document processing
• Agent frameworks - hands-on experience with multi-agent orchestration tools (e.g., Google ADK, StrandsAgents, LangGraph, CrewAI, or equivalents)
• AI-augmented development - effective use of agentic coding assistants (Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code) to accelerate delivery
• Open source or community contributions - published packages, conference talks, or internal framework development
• Startup-pace experience - comfort with ambiguity, rapid iteration, and wearing multiple hats

Location: St Pancras London (3 days per week onsite / 60% overall)

Salary: Competitive + Excellent Benefits!

Why Evinova (AstraZeneca)?

Evinova draws on AstraZeneca’s deep experience developing novel therapeutics, informed by insights from thousands of patients and clinical researchers. Together, we can accelerate the delivery of life-changing medicines, improve the design and delivery of clinical trials for better patient experiences and outcomes, and think more holistically about patient care before, during, and after treatment.

We know that regulators, healthcare professionals, and care teams at clinical trial sites do not want a fragmented approach. They do not want a future where every pharmaceutical company provides its own, different digital solutions. They want solutions that work across the sector, simplify their workload, and benefit patients broadly. By bringing our solutions to the wider healthcare community, we can help build more unified approaches to how we all develop and deploy digital technologies, better serving our teams, physicians, and ultimately patients.

Evinova represents a unique opportunity to deliver meaningful outcomes with digital and AI to serve the wider healthcare community and create new standards for the sector. Join us on our journey of building a new kind of health tech business to reset expectations of what a bio-pharmaceutical company can be. This means we’re opening new ways to work, pioneering cutting-edge methods, and bringing unexpected teams together. Interested? Come and join our journey.

Where can I find out more?

Learn more about Evinova:

Follow Evinova on LinkedIn:

When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we unleash bold thinking with the power to inspire life-changing medicines. In-person working gives us the platform we need to connect, work at pace and challenge perceptions. That’s why we work, on average, a minimum of three days per week from the office. But that doesn't mean we’re not flexible. We balance the expectation of being in the office while respecting individual flexibility. Join us in our unique and ambitious world.

#LI-HYBRID

Date Posted

11-Aug-2026

Closing Date

25-Aug-2026Our mission is to build an inclusive and equitable environment. We want people to feel they belong at AstraZeneca and Alexion, starting with our recruitment process. We welcome and consider applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of characteristics. We offer reasonable adjustments/accommodations to help all candidates to perform at their best. If you have a need for any adjustments/accommodations, please complete the section in the application form.