Senior Data Scientist

Position: Senior Real World Data Scientist )
Location:

Mississauga, Canada
Overview  The Epidemiology and Real‑World Science team in Alexion–AstraZeneca’s Rare Disease Unit accelerates patient access to innovative medicines by advancing the scientific use of Real World Data (RWD). In this role, you will apply RWD to support the rare disease portfolio, aligned with AstraZeneca best practices and standards. Building on AstraZeneca’s strong Real World Evidence (RWE) foundation and internal data assets, the team is expanding through a dedicated Real World Data Science capability.
Successful candidates will tackle challenging problems with innovative methods to deliver Real World Insights and Evidence for stakeholders in Clinical Development, Regulatory, and Patient Safety. The ideal candidate is a curious, self‑directed learner with a proven record of deriving value from routinely collected healthcare or observational data, delivering health analytics across Public Health, Pharmaceutical R&D, Commercial/Payer, and Patient Safety.
You will provide methods expertise, lead and support analyses of RWD, and guide study design, data source selection, and best practices in RWD utilization, emphasizing patient safety. You will also help shape Alexion/AZ’s RWS data strategy by supporting due diligence on data vendors and offering informatics support for Therapeutic Area data acquisitions.
Responsibilities   Deliver/Implement and support advanced secondary analyses of data from EMR, claims and primary observational data required by TA RWE strategies
Comfortable working in a rapid analytics environment alongside stakeholders to ideate appropriate/impactful analysis along with implementation
Provide clear technical input, options and directions to support strategic decisions made by AZ observational study teams on study design, data partner selection and best practices in RWE data utilization
Monitor work performed by contract personnel and vendors
Maintain a strong insight into the capabilities of potential external partners in RWE, especially for US and emerging markets.
Demonstrate best practice in Real World Data Science across multiple domains, and/or stakeholder groups.
Qualifications   Minimum of master’s degree in Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Public Health, Statistics, Mathematics, Data Science, or related field with at least 3 years in the pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology, or consulting environment.
The duties of this role are generally conducted in an office environment. As is typical of an office‑based role, employees must be able, with or without an accommodation to: use a computer; engage in communications via phone, video, and electronic messaging; engage in problem solving and non‑linear thought, analysis, and dialogue; collaborate with others; maintain general availability during standard business hours.
Preferred Skills   This is a hands‑on role – so be excited to code!
Enthusiastic about building on and learning new methods and ways to use real world data to change the practice of medicine
Demonstrated ability to build long‑term relationships with stakeholders, understand relevant scientific/business challenges at a deep level and translate into a programme of data science activities to deliver value to the business
Hands‑on experience with EMR, disease registries, and/or insurance claims databases

Experience with in clinical data standards, medical terminologies and controlled vocabularies used in healthcare data and ontologies (ICD9/10/SNOMED)
Experience in supporting pharmacoepidemiology studies with proven track record of advancing approaches with statistics/machine learning/data science
Ability to lead & handle multi‑disciplinary data science projects
Proficient in SQL
Proficient in at least one of R, Python
Compensation & Benefits  Annual base salary for this position ranges from  to .
AstraZeneca is committed to providing fair and equitable compensation opportunities to all colleagues. Our compensation policies and practices have been designed to allow colleagues to progress through the salary range over time as they progress in their role. The range provided in this posting represents an offer pay range used in a majority of situations.
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