Director, Product Science

The Director of Product Science ensures the scientific credibility and rigor of Datavant Life Sciences’ real-world evidence and data discovery agents. The (Sr.) Director of Product Science works closely with product and engineering stakeholders and is accountable to ensure agent conceptualization, development, and evaluation meet the needs of Datavant’s internal and external scientific customers and the scientific standards of the Datavant science team. Specifically, the (Sr.) Director works across and within product zones (e.g. evidence generation, data discovery) and product pods (e.g. algorithm builder, explore assistant) on the following:

• Scientific agent conceptualization (e.g. why is the agent needed? and for whom?)
• Scientific problem statement
• Agent task and bounds
• Scientific workflow design & SME review/decision points
• Scientific reference set and agent context
• Scientific evaluation design and application
• Scientific internal testing requirements and execution 

The scope of this role includes application of domain knowledge and RWE expertise in the development of agents and agent systems intended to complete scientific tasks. As the senior scientific leader working within the product pods and zones, the Director is accountable for scientific submissions for product/roadmap governance review, including eval sets, agent performance metrics, etc. The role also serves as the SME on the non-agentic scientific workflows relevant to the agent/agent system. 

In addition to working within the product pods, the Director serves as the science lead for customer delivery of agent co-build/co-development/co-design scientific partnerships with Datavant’s pharma and data ecosystem customers. In this role, the Director is responsible and accountable for the scientific quality of the contracted and delivered scientific work, which may include the design of customer-specific agentic RWE workflows, application of those workflows to customer SOPs, design and development of customer-specific agents for RWE tasks across the workflow, and evaluation of those agents. 

The Director contributes to agentic AI scientific thought leadership activities at the discretion of the Head of Product Science and the Chief Science Officer (CSO). This may include contributions to blogs, webinars, and/or live presentations at scientific meetings.  

The Director contributes to scientific support of GTM teams on translating customer and competitor intelligence and identifying market signals.

• Doctorate or master’s degree in epidemiology, biostatistics, or a related field
• Professional research experience in real-world evidence (RWE), pharmacoepidemiology, health economics and outcomes research (HEOR), or a closely related field: at least 3 years after a doctorate or 6 years after a master’s degree for Director; at least 5 years after a doctorate or 8 years after a master’s degree for Senior Director
• Strong command of observational study design, healthcare data, and analytic methods, with the ability to assess methodological choices and interpret findings in light of study limitations.
• Ability to drive progress across cross-functional product teams, manage competing priorities, resolve scientific and product delivery challenges, and negotiate scope and timelines.
• Experience managing or providing matrix leadership to colleagues, including coaching and substantive feedback: at least 1 year for Director or 2 years for Senior Director.
• Bring rigorous scientific judgment to RWE product development, challenging assumptions, critically evaluating proposed features and analytic outputs, and recommending changes that strengthen scientific validity and usefulness for researchers
• Excellent scientific writing and communication skills, including the ability to present findings to both scientific and non-scientific audiences
• Extensive experience with multiple types of healthcare data used in RWE research and familiarity with analytic tools or evidence generation platforms  (e.g. R, Python, Substantiate)

• Experience in roles requiring scientific judgment, strategic problem-solving, and leadership of complex initiatives across scientific, technical, commercial, and operations functions
• Experience developing scientific standards, study templates, quality processes, or methodological guidance used across teams.
• Experience representing an organization as a subject matter expert in workshops, webinars, and professional forums
• A record of peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, or other external scientific contributions; for Senior Director candidates, a track record of high-impact work
• Experience leveraging AI tools (agents or LLMs) for scientific work products and fluency in basic AI terminology

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