Principal Scientist Engineering

Job Title: Principal Scientist Engineering

Location: Cambridge, MA

Abou the Job

Are you ready to shape the future of medicine? The race is on to speed up drug discovery and development to find answers for patients and their families. Your skills could be critical in helping our teams accelerate Progress. 

We are seeking highly motivated individual to join our drug substance process engineering and modeling team. As a technical expert in process engineering and modeling, you will play a key role in advancing our global engineering department within Sanofi’s R&D CMC Synthetic organization. This position is located in Cambridge MA and will collaborate closely with colleagues in France to support digital development and implement new ways of working.

Your expertise in chemical engineering, process system modeling, and lab automation will be crucial in creating a self-driving lab for small molecule drug substance process development and optimization. You will help developing automated experimental workflows to generate data for model building, advancing the creation of digital twins and driving innovation in pharmaceutical process development.

We believe that lab automation and digital development are crucial for the future of process development in Pharma. By joining our team, you will be at the forefront of this transformation, using your expertise to push the boundaries of process engineering.

This is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of process modelling and data science in a cutting-edge scientific department developing the next generation of Sanofi medicines that will improve the quality of life for patients across the world.

We are an innovative global healthcare company with one purpose: to chase the miracles of science to improve people’s lives. We’re also a company where you can flourish and grow your career, with countless opportunities to explore, make connections with people, and stretch the limits of what you thought was possible. Ready to get started?

Main Responsibilities:

Lab automation & data generation:

• You will work closely with laboratory teams (process chemists, engineers, and the high-throughput experimentation team), fostering strong partnerships with scientists to deeply understand their research processes. Your goal will be to design, develop, and deploy cutting-edge automated systems, robotics, instrumentation, and digital workflows that significantly enhance the productivity and efficiency of our labs

• You will be responsible for programming and developing automated laboratory systems. This includes supporting software development and deployment to automate workflows, integrating analytical instruments with laboratory software, and ensuring seamless communication between instruments and Sanofi's internal data management services.

Mechanistic & data-driven model building:

• As part of matrix project teams, build mechanistic, hybrid, and data-driven modeling solutions to support small molecule process development. Collaborate with process development teams to integrate crystallization modeling into the overall process design and optimization workflow.

Model deployment at scale:

• Assist in the development and deployment of digital twins for both batch and continuous processes, ensuring alignment with Quality by Design (QbD) principles. You will play a key role in implementing and scaling Model Predictive Control (MPC) systems, leveraging advanced process models to optimize performance in real-time, maintain product quality, and enhance operational efficiency across large-scale manufacturing environments.

• Provide concise technical presentations to communicate work to project teams, cross functional teams and management.  Document all work on projects and continuous improvements in eLNB experiments and summarize in Technical Reports. 

• Establish/extend external network by providing leadership on academic, industrial, or government sponsored collaborations.  Steer collaboration projects to address gaps in scientific knowledge. 

About You

Basic Qualifications:

• PhD in chemical engineering with a minimum of 5 years experience in industry or academia, a master’s degree with a minimum of 8 years of experience or a bachelor’s degree with a minimum of 12 years experience.

• A PhD or masters degree in another field related to advanced modeling or automation such mathematics or physics and with experience relevant to the job description.

• Strong skills in writing and optimizing scripts in programming languages such as Python/Matlab/C#/Visual Basic.

• Experience with crystallization modeling and simulation tools (e.g., gPROMS).

• Experience in designing and implementing automated laboratory processes from the initial concept through to full deployment.

• Demonstrated ability to translate mathematical models into computer programs.

• An ability to work as part of a team, engaging other scientists with complementary skill sets in the field of pharmaceutical development.

• A change agent mentality, proposing novel approach to challenging scientific questions and exploring new modeling approaches

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with laboratory analytical measurement instruments or relevant work experience in a pharmaceutical sciences laboratory setting.

• Domain knowledge in small molecule process development with demonstrated industrial applications or academic publications in this field

• Some knowledge in Multivariate Analysis, chemometrics and statistics

• Experience in the development and scale-up of continuous processes

Why Choose Us?

• Bring the miracles of science to life alongside a supportive, future-focused team.

• Discover endless opportunities to grow your talent and drive your career, whether it’s through a promotion or lateral move, at home or internationally.

• Enjoy a thoughtful, well-crafted rewards package that recognizes your contribution and amplifies your impact.

• Take good care of yourself and your family, with a wide range of health and wellbeing benefits including high-quality healthcare, prevention and wellness programs and at least 14 weeks’ gender-neutral parental leave.

Sanofi Inc. and its U.S. affiliates are Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employers committed to a culturally diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race; color; creed; religion; national origin; age; ancestry; nationality; marital, domestic partnership or civil union status; sex, gender, gender identity or expression; affectional or sexual orientation; disability; veteran or military status or liability for military status; domestic violence victim status; atypical cellular or blood trait; genetic information (including the refusal to submit to genetic testing) or any other characteristic protected by law.

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All compensation will be determined commensurate with demonstrated experience. Employees may be eligible to participate in Company employee benefit programs, and additional benefits information can be found here.