Senior Principal Investigator, Physical AI for Autonomous Discovery

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at jnj.com.

As guided by Our Credo, Johnson & Johnson is responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. We provide an inclusive work environment where each person is considered as an individual. At Johnson & Johnson, we respect the diversity and dignity of our employees and recognize their merit.

Our expertise in Innovative Medicine is informed and inspired by patients, whose insights fuel our science-based advancements. Visionaries like you work on teams that save lives by developing the medicines of tomorrow.

Join us in developing treatments, finding cures, and pioneering the path from lab to life while championing patients every step of the way.

Learn more at https://www.jnj.com/innovative-medicine

Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine is recruiting for a Senior Principal Investigator, Physical AI for Autonomous Discovery to join our In Silico Drug Discovery team.  The preferred location for this position is Spring House, PA (Philadelphia area) and may require travel as needed.  Consideration may be given for candidates near the Cambridge, MA area. (No remote option.) 

Reporting to the Director, Physical AI for Autonomous Discovery, the Senior Principal Investigator will serve as a hands-on scientific and technical leader developing Physical AI capabilities for autonomous laboratory experimentation. This individual-contributor role combines AI, robotics, laboratory automation, and scientific reasoning to design, implement, and validate systems that perceive laboratory state, recommend actions, learn from experimental data, recover from errors, and improve experimental outcomes.

• →Lead the hands-on design, development, and validation of AI models that represent instruments, samples, reagents, robotic systems, workflows, and laboratory state.
• →Develop and evaluate adaptive experimental optimization methods using active learning, Bayesian optimization, reinforcement learning, and multi-objective optimization.
• →Implement capabilities for physical error detection and correction, including anomaly recognition, root-cause assessment, workflow replanning, recovery actions, and appropriate human escalation.
• →Build models that generate testable hypotheses for experimental failures, unexpected results, variability, and irreproducibility, and recommend discriminating follow-up experiments.
• →Develop agentic and multi-agent capabilities that support experiment planning and execution monitoring across Design-Make-Test-Analyze cycles.
• →Translate scientific and operational needs into technical requirements, prototypes, and production-ready capabilities in partnership with automation, robotics, data science, engineering, and discovery scientists.
• →Provide technical guidance, establish scientific best practices, and mentor colleagues without formal people-management responsibility.
• →Embed calibrated uncertainty, safety constraints, monitoring, traceability, and governance into autonomous decision-making, escalating strategic tradeoffs to the Director as appropriate.

• Prototype and production capabilities measurably reduce unplanned intervention by detecting, diagnosing, and supporting recovery from laboratory execution failures.
• AI-generated hypotheses explain experimental anomalies and guide informative follow-up experiments that improve data quality and learning efficiency.
• Closed-loop optimization methods are validated against clear scientific and operational benchmarks for quality, throughput, reproducibility, and decision-making.
• Technical workstreams progress from proof of concept to reliable deployment through documented designs, reproducible evaluation, and effective cross-functional execution.
• The individual partners closely with the Director and with J&J IT and Data, Data Science & AI, automation, and scientific teams to deliver robust, secure, and governed agentic capabilities.

• PhD in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, computer science, engineering, computational biology, or a related quantitative field, with substantial relevant research or industry experience.
• Demonstrated track record of independently developing and deploying AI systems in physical, scientific, or similarly complex environments.
• Deep expertise in multiple relevant areas, such as world models, reinforcement learning, Bayesian optimization, causal inference, multimodal AI, robotics, or scientific machine learning.
• Advanced software-development skills, including Python, modern machine-learning frameworks, experimental software design, testing, and reproducible deployment practices.
• Ability to define technical workstreams, solve ambiguous scientific problems, and deliver robust solutions with limited day-to-day direction.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and influence skills for working effectively across multidisciplinary teams in a matrix environment.
• Preferred Experience
• Self-driving laboratories, laboratory automation, or closed-loop scientific experimentation.
• Vision-language-action models, digital twins, machine vision, robotic control, or multi-agent systems.
• Biologics, drug discovery, life sciences, or another complex experimental domain.
• Deployment of safety-critical or high-reliability AI systems with monitoring and governance controls.