Location. Basel, Switzerland.

Today, Lonza is a global leader in life sciences operating across five continents. While we work in science, there’s no magic formula to how we do it. Our greatest scientific solution is talented people working together, devising ideas that help businesses to help people. In exchange, we let our people own their careers. Their ideas, big and small, genuinely improve the world. And that’s the kind of work we want to be part of.

Are you passionate about leading innovative machine learning projects and driving advancements in biomanufacturing? Lonza is seeking a dynamic and experienced Lead Principal Data Scientist, to join our R&D team in Basel. In this role, you will lead a team of talented ML scientists and engineers, manage multiple ML programs, and collaborate with various departments to develop cutting-edge solutions that will improve and transform biomanufacturing.

What you’ll get:

• An agile career and dynamic working culture

• An inclusive and ethical workplace

• Compensation programs that recognize high performance

• A variety of benefits dependant on role and location

The full list of our global benefits can be also found on https://www.lonza.com/careers/benefits.

What you’ll do:

• Lead the R&D Machine Learning team and manage direct reports.

• Develop and execute the end-to-end Machine Learning roadmap, from ideation to deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle support.

• Create innovative and proprietary machine learning solutions to address challenges across the Integrated Biologics Business.

• Advise R&D leadership on ML-relevant risks and opportunities, providing strategic insights for project prioritization and business decisions.

• Represent Lonza externally at conferences, in academic collaborations, and in key industry forums.

• Identify innovation opportunities and use data to address complex biomanufacturing problems.

• Mentor and develop ML scientists and engineers, ensuring high scientific rigor and compliance with reproducible research principles.

• Guide the development and implementation of MLOps practices to streamline machine learning workflows.

• Build and nurture external partnerships with academia, CROs, and technology vendors.

What we’re looking for:

• PhD or MSc with 7+ years of industry experience in ML/AI, computational biology or related field.

• Ability to identify innovative solutions to problems leading to valuable R&D discoveries and applications.

• Hands-on with supervised, unsupervised and deep-learning techniques in Python or R.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills and p roven experience managing small technical teams.

• Understanding of GMP requirements and their application in the industrial deployment of Machine Learning projects.

• Strong expertise in MLOps, CI/CD, containerization and cloud platforms (preferably Azure)

• Strong stakeholder-influence skills, comfortable presenting to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Every day, Lonza’s products and services have a positive impact on millions of people. For us, this is not only a great privilege, but also a great responsibility. How we achieve our business results is just as important as the achievements themselves. At Lonza, we respect and protect our people and our environment. Any success we achieve is no success at all if not achieved ethically.

People come to Lonza for the challenge and creativity of solving complex problems and developing new ideas in life sciences. In return, we offer the satisfaction that comes with improving lives all around the world. The satisfaction that comes with making a meaningful difference.

Lonza is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, status as a qualified individual with disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.