Senior Scientist, Human Genetics

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company - Boston, MA

Full-time - Senior

Remote - Boston, MA

Chemical Manufacturing

About the position

The Senior Scientist, Human Genetics at Takeda Pharmaceutical is a pivotal role within the R&D organization, focusing on leveraging human genetics data to advance drug discovery and development across various therapeutic areas, including Gastrointestinal & Inflammatory diseases, Neurosciences, and Oncology. This position involves leading projects from ideation to execution, collaborating with cross-functional teams, and contributing to the establishment of the Human Genetics group strategy. The role emphasizes innovation and collaboration to drive impactful insights that can lead to transformative therapies for patients.

Responsibilities

• Lead human genetics projects from ideation to execution using publicly available and proprietary data.
• Contribute to establishing the Human Genetics group strategy.
• Collaborate with colleagues across various functions to drive impact and contribute to go-no go decisions in drug discovery.
• Contribute to external collaborations linking genetic data to longitudinal phenotypic data from diverse populations.
• Design, analyze, and interpret genetic studies to inform target identification, safety assessment, and population stratification.

Requirements

• PhD in computational biology, bioinformatics, or a similar discipline with 2+ years of postdoctoral experience in human genetics research.
• Deep experience with GWAS/eQTL/pQTL analyses, fine-mapping, colocalization, and Mendelian randomization.
• Experience analyzing genetic data linked to longitudinal real-world health data from large biobanks.
• Strong scientific understanding of molecular biology and genomics, with the ability to interpret genetic findings in a disease context.
• Solid knowledge of Unix, command line interfaces, and fluency in common scripting and/or programming languages (e.g., R, Python, Perl, Java, C/C++).
• Experience with parallel computing and cloud computing.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience contributing to pre-competitive academic-pharma partnerships.
• Experience with proteomics and/or transcriptomic data analyses.
• Familiarity with pharmaceutical R&D processes and disease areas of interest to Takeda.
• Experience with phenotype ontologies, pathway-based approaches, multivariate analyses, polygenic risk score analyses, and machine learning.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) plan with company match
• Short-term and long-term disability coverage
• Basic life insurance
• Tuition reimbursement program
• Paid volunteer time off
• Company holidays
• Well-being benefits
• Sick time accrual (up to 80 hours per year)
• Paid vacation accrual (up to 120 hours for new hires)