Principal AI Research Scientist - Biomedical Imaging & Digital Pathology
The Principal AI Research Scientist will lead the development of advanced AI algorithms for biomedical imaging and digital pathology to improve diagnostic accuracy. The role involves designing deep‑learning models, managing data pipelines, and collaborating with cross‑functional teams across Merck’s global healthcare division.
Skills required
About this role
Work Your Magic with us!
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.
Your role
In this role, you will develop and apply advanced foundation models, multimodal models, and generative AI methods for biomedical imaging, with particular emphasis on digital pathology, histology, and image-based characterization of biological systems.
You will conceptualize, design, train, adapt, and rigorously evaluate large-scale image and multimodal models. You will work with data such as H&E pathology, IHC, multiplex imaging, microscopy, and related biomedical imaging modalities, developing representations and models that capture biologically and clinically meaningful information.
You will investigate state-of-the-art vision and multimodal architectures, adapt relevant publicly available foundation models, and develop novel methods where appropriate. A central part of your work will be establishing robust evaluation and benchmarking approaches that characterize model performance, generalization, robustness, and scientific utility across datasets and downstream tasks.
You will work in an agentic scientific environment, contributing imaging models, methods, and code that can be integrated with scientific data, other modalities, and analytical tools. You will collaborate closely with pathology, translational medicine, biology, data science, and AI colleagues, as well as external scientific partners, and contribute to publications and conference presentations.
Who you are
- Master's degree or PhD in computer science, machine learning, computer vision, biomedical engineering, computational pathology, or a related quantitative discipline; PhD is strongly preferred.
- At least 3 years of relevant industry experience applying advanced machine learning to image-analysis problems.
- Deep hands-on expertise in designing, training, fine-tuning, and evaluating computer-vision, vision foundation, or multimodal models.
- Experience with biomedical imaging is strongly preferred, particularly digital pathology, histology, microscopy, IHC, or multiplex imaging.
- Strong Python skills and expertise with modern deep-learning frameworks such as PyTorch
- Experience training large models using GPU and cloud computing environments.
- Excellent understanding of model evaluation, benchmarking, generalization, dataset bias, and robustness.
- Experience with multimodal learning that connects imaging with molecular, clinical, textual, or other biological information is an advantage.
- Experience integrating models with agents, AI skills, or automated scientific workflows is highly desirable.
- Strong record of scientific or technical innovation demonstrated through publications, patents, open-source work, or high-impact industrial applications.
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!