Data Science Lead
About this opportunity
Make your mark for patients
To strengthen our Global Advanced Analytics team, we are looking for an adaptable, collaborative individual with an intrapreneurial mindset for our Analytics Lead opening. This hybrid role is based in our headquarters in Monheim, Germany requiring 40% onsite presence and 5-10% international/ domestic travel.
About the role
You will help to inform on the commercial viability of various assets in development. You will be responsible for making exceptional business impact with the use of secondary data and insights development through advanced analytics methods, enabling an increased use of data and, where applicable, reducing the necessity for building primary data. You will also be responsible for managing and implementing advanced analytics/AI projects to ensure successful delivery. You will oversee the ongoing operations of advanced analytics solutions to ensure that models continue to work and scale them up with additional demand and applications. You will serve as the subject matter expert for Advanced Analytics/AI capabilities in support of business needs within Patient Solutions and Patient Evidence.
Who you’ll work with
You will co-create with Integrated Insights Leads from early asset and late stage (Phase 0-3) teams, Real world evidence teams, Translational Medicine and Bioinformatics, Clinical operations, clinical recruitment, and asset teams, new product planning teams, Commercial teams, Medical Affairs, Market Access, Finance, and IT. Externally, you will work with data and analytics vendors and partners.
What you’ll do
Analytics Leadership: Provide clear expertise for opportunities to leverage advanced analytics, especially where they are advantageous to reducing the need for primary data or have high marginal impact
Deliver the most impactful data and analytics projects that:
address the most compelling business questions, and/or
identify new opportunities for patients and UCB through effective visual displays of quantitative and qualitative information
Partnership and Collaboration: Be the key strategic partner for functional stakeholders and co-create plans and priorities for data and advanced analytics with them together with the Patient Solutions and Evidence Leads. Ensure tight relationships and collaboration with IT, Data Office, and other Analytics teams using relevant data sources.
Team Leadership . Serve as a mentor and guide to more junior data scientists and translators in demonstrating the application of cutting-edge analytics, clear communication and presentation of insights and practical/pragmatic implementation of key recommendations
Drive the execution of regional and local data-driven insights research and data analytics plans and priorities
Foster a strong data science community with significant business acumen and communication skills across Hubs and Engine and Supervise the conduct of advanced analytics studies in a collaborative manner ensuring that the study methodology is appropriate to deliver reliable results.
Improve the team’s partnership with, and impact on, key internal (UCB) and external stakeholders within the specific area of focus by:
developing and executing a communication and collaboration plan with key UCB stakeholders
increasing personal and the Advanced Analytics team’s knowledge of the business by ensuring that she/he and each team member has direct interaction with patients and/or other external stakeholders
Attract , retain, motivate, and develop key talent for the Advanced Analytics team; coach and develop team members
Drive deep partnership with the Hub insights team and other “fellow” Engines and insights generating functions (e.g. regional analytics teams) allowing for a joined delivery of cross-functional, deep impactful insights
Be a champion for a data-driven, decision-making culture
Interested? For this role we’re looking for the following education, experience and skills
Minimum Experience/Skills Required:
Bachelor's degree in quantitative area
Minimum of 8-10+ years experience applying predictive modeling techniques such as ML, decision trees, ensemble learning, neural networks etc, and data transformation such as data cleansing and integration, fuzzy matching, etc., is required
Minimum of 8-10+ years of experience developing program/project plans and leading programs/projects from initiation to implementation is required
At least 8 years of experience working with real world data (Claims data, EMR, IQVIA, -omics, etc)
Minimum of 8-10+ years of experience with programming and application development using Python or R is preferred
Preferred Experience/Skills:
Master/Doctor’s degree in quantitative area
Knowledge of pharmaceutical industry, ideally specialty pharma and biologic treatments
Deep expertise in leveraging data science methodologies within the Research and Development and Clinical trials sphere of the pharmaceutical industry. The Go-to-Market domain encompasses the commercial, medical, and market access facets of the business
Expertise in analyzing a range of large, secondary transactional databases, unstructured data or other computationally difficult challenges
You are a structured problem solver
Possess an 80/20 mindset to push for fast model iterations
Interpret model results and identify potential model errors (e.g., overfitting, model bias, correlation vs causation)
Global role, so willingness and flexibility to work across geographies / time zones (sometimes outside of core hours)
Are you ready to ‘go beyond’ to create value and make your mark for patients? If this sounds like you, then we would love to hear from you!
About us
UCB is a global biopharmaceutical company, focusing on neurology and immunology. We are over 9.000 people in all four corners of the globe, inspired by patients and driven by science.
Why work with us?
At UCB, we don’t just complete tasks, we create value. We aren’t afraid to push forward, collaborate, and innovate to make our mark for patients. We have a caring, supportive culture where everyone feels included, respected, and has equal opportunities to do their best work. We ‘go beyond’ to create value for our patients, and always with a human focus, whether that’s on our patients, our employees, or our planet. Working for us, you will discover a place where you can grow, and have the freedom to carve your own career path to achieve your full potential.
At UCB, we’ve embraced a hybrid-first approach to work, bringing teams together in local hubs to foster collaborative curiosity. Unless explicitly stated in the description or precluded by the nature of the position, roles are hybrid with 40% of your time spent in the office.
UCB is an equal opportunity employer. All employment decisions will be made without regard to any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. UCB invites you to voluntarily self-identify during the application process. Provision of self-identification information is entirely voluntary and a decision to provide or not provide such information will not have any effect on your application for employment, your employment with UCB, or otherwise subject you to any adverse treatment. Any information you provide will be considered confidential and will be kept separate from your application and/or personnel file and will only be used in accordance with applicable laws, orders, and regulations.
Should you require any adjustments to our process to assist you in demonstrating your strengths and capabilities contact us on [email protected] for application to US based roles. Please note should your enquiry not relate to adjustments; we will not be able to support you through this channel.
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Biostatistics & Data Science role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 137 comparable Biostatistics & Data Science roles across 22 biopharma companies.
Salary context
46 of 137 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function. This posting doesn't list a seniority level, so peers aren't narrowed by seniority either -- the range below may span more levels than usual.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 137 comparable roles
+ 11 more countries
Seniority mix
105 of 137 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
14 of 137 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.