Formation Bio

Data Scientist, Portfolio Optimization

New York, NY; Boston, MA

Sponsorship not specified$155k-$202kDetected 23 days ago

PythonMachine LearningPandasNumPySparkAirflowData ScienceLLMsStatisticsClinical TrialsResearch

About the role

About Formation Bio Formation Bio is a tech and AI driven pharma company differentiated by radically more efficient drug development.
The company is backed by investors across pharma and tech, including a16z, Sequoia, Sanofi, Thrive Capital, John Doerr, Spark Capital, SV Angel Growth, and others.
This role sits at the intersection of quantitative finance, healthcare data, and AI-driven drug development.

Work with the team to implement and maintain core portfolio engine: order management system, execution simulation layer, portfolio construction service, and performance tracking
Design risk frameworks that quantify exposure across a portfolio of drug development bets with radically different risk profiles, timelines, and failure modes
Work with product and engineering teams to build dashboards and reporting that communicate portfolio performance, risk metrics, and strategy comparisons to both technical and executive stakeholders
Collaborate with the broader data science team to ensure portfolio-level evaluation feeds back into model improvement and evidence prioritization
Formation Bio partners, acquires, or in-licenses drugs from pharma companies, research organizations, and biotechs to develop programs past clinical proof of concept and beyond, ultimately helping to bring new medicines to patients.

Strong Python programming skills with experience in data-intensive workflows (pandas, numpy, scipy)
Demonstrated ability to work with messy, real-world datasets - comfortable with data wrangling, deduplication, and quality assessment

Experience with backtesting frameworks or portfolio simulation (vectorbt, Backtrader, or custom implementations)
Familiarity with alternative data in a research or investment context
Comfort with LLMs or AI/ML pipelines in a production or research setting
Familiarity with dashboard/visualization tools (Streamlit, Plotly, Dash) and pipeline orchestration (Dagster, Airflow)
both are not required.

Individual compensation is determined by several factors, including role scope, geographic location, and skills & experience.
Your offer will reflect where you fall within the range based on these considerations.
In addition to base salary, we offer equity, comprehensive benefits, and generous perks.
If the posted range doesn't match your expectations, we still encourage you to apply!
Where We Hire Formation Bio is prioritizing hiring in key hubs, primarily the New York City and Boston metro areas, with a hybrid model requiring 3 days per week in office.
Applicants from the Research Triangle (NC) and San Francisco Bay Area may also be considered.

Our Vision for AI in Pharma
1-3 years in a quantitative research, data science, or analytics role in life sciences or life science adjacent field (healthcare, academic research, or consulting all count

Run rigorous backtesting experiments with strict temporal constraints to evaluate Formation strategies against baseline approaches and measure marginal signal from new evidence sources
Coordinate across the organization to integrate internal Formation data sources (clinical trial data, genomic evidence, real-world data) and proprietary tooling into portfolio analytics pipelines
Advancements in AI and drug discovery are creating more candidate drugs than the industry can progress because of the high cost and time of clinical trials.
Recognizing that this development bottleneck may ultimately limit the number of new medicines that can reach patients, Formation Bio, founded in 2016 as TrialSpark Inc., has built technology platforms, processes, and capabilities to accelerate all aspects of drug development and clinical trials.

Formation Bio is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.
We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome candidates from all backgrounds.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions), gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.
Equal Opportunity Formation Bio is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.

This listing is sourced directly from Formation Bio's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.