Principal Machine Learning Scientist for Protein Design - all genders

About the job

🚀The opportunity:

Join Sanofi's Biologics AI & Design team at the forefront of a revolution in drug discovery. We're building next-generation foundational models that are directly shaping our therapeutic pipeline — designing antibody and NANOBODY® molecules that will become tomorrow's medicines for patients worldwide.

You'll be part of a elite global team within our Digital Biologics Platform (DBxP), working at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research and real-world therapeutic development. This isn't just about publishing papers or building models in isolation — it's about deploying foundational models that directly impact drug candidates moving through our portfolio.

What makes this role unique:

• 🧬Proprietary biological data at scale — Access to one of the world's largest proprietary datasets of antibody sequences, structures, and functional annotations from decades of therapeutic development

• 💻World-class compute infrastructure — State-of-the-art GPU clusters and cloud resources for training large-scale foundational models

• 🎯Real therapeutic impact — Your models will be validated against real targets and integrated into live drug discovery programs

• 📚Scientific freedom — We encourage publication, conference participation, and collaboration with leading academic labs

• 🌍Global collaboration — Work with interdisciplinary teams across computational biology, protein engineering, and therapeutic development

🎯 What You'll Do

Build the future of protein therapeutics design:

• Architect and train next-generation foundational models for antibody and NANOBODY® design, including protein language models, structure prediction models, diffusion-based generative models, and multimodal architectures

• Push the boundaries of generative protein design — develop novel training strategies, fine-tuning approaches, and inference methods that leverage Sanofi's unique biological data assets

• Bridge research and application — deploy your models into production pipelines where they'll be used to design real therapeutic candidates against challenging targets

• Validate rigorously — design benchmarking strategies and work with wet-lab teams to experimentally validate model predictions on therapeutically relevant targets

• Collaborate across disciplines — partner with antibody engineers, structural biologists, screening teams, and therapeutic area experts to understand biological constraints and opportunities

• Stay at the cutting edge — monitor emerging architectures and methods, evaluate their potential, and rapidly prototype new approaches

• Contribute to the scientific community — publish your work, present at conferences, and help establish Sanofi as a leader in AI-driven biologics design

About you

🧠 What You Bring

Education & Experience:

• Ph.D. in computational life sciences, computer science, machine learning, bioinformatics, or related field (or M.Sc. with exceptional track record)

• Deep expertise in modern deep learning architectures - transformers, diffusion models, flow matching, VAEs, or other generative modeling paradigms

• Hands-on experience training large-scale models - you've trained models with millions to billions of parameters and understand distributed training, optimization strategies, and scaling laws

• Strong foundation in protein science - understanding of protein sequence-structure-function relationships, ideally with focus on antibodies or therapeutic proteins

• Publication track record demonstrating impact in foundational model development, generative modeling, and/or computational protein design

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Technical Excellence

• Expert-level Python programming and deep learning frameworks

• Experience with ML/DL models for protein design (ESM, ProteinMPNN, RFdiffusion, AlphaFold, etc.) - training, fine-tuning, and application

• Proficiency with distributed training frameworks and cloud/HPC environments

• Software engineering practices - version control, testing, documentation, reproducibility

• Familiarity with biological databases, sequence analysis tools, and structural biology software

Personal Attributes:

• Intellectual curiosity - you're excited by hard scientific problems and driven to solve them

• Collaborative mindset - you thrive in interdisciplinary environments and can communicate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences

• Pragmatic innovation - you balance cutting-edge research with practical application and understand the importance of validation

• Scientific rigor - you design robust experiments, think critically about limitations, and are honest about uncertainty

• Self-motivated - you can work independently, prioritize effectively, and drive projects forward

• Passion for impact - you're motivated by the opportunity to develop medicines that improve patients' lives

About us

🌟 What We Offer

Scientific Environment:

• Access to proprietary biological datasets unavailable anywhere else

• State-of-the-art computational infrastructure (GPU clusters, cloud resources)

• Freedom to publish and present at top-tier conferences

• Collaboration with leading academic partners and external research groups

• Opportunity to shape the future of AI-driven drug discovery

Professional Growth

• Work alongside world-class experts in protein engineering, structural biology, and machine learning

• Exposure to the full drug discovery lifecycle - from target selection to pre-clinical development

• Mentorship opportunities and career development support

• Access to internal training, conferences, and scientific networks

Impact & Mission:

• Your work will directly contribute to therapeutic programs addressing serious diseases

• Be part of Sanofi's mission to chase the miracles of science and improve patients' lives

• Join a company committed to innovation, scientific excellence, and bold thinking

Culture:

• Global, diverse, and inclusive team environment

• Flexible working arrangements

• Competitive compensation and benefits package

🤝 Join us

At Sanofi, we believe the next breakthrough in biologics won't come from incremental improvements - it will come from fundamentally new ways of designing proteins. If you're passionate about building foundational models that will reshape therapeutic development, we want to hear from you.

Our values guide everything we do:

• Aim Higher - We set ambitious goals and pursue scientific excellence

• Act for Patients - We're driven by the opportunity to improve lives

• Be Bold - We take calculated risks and embrace innovation

• Lead Together - We collaborate across disciplines and geographies

Ready to help us design the medicines of tomorrow?

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