Amgen
#WeareBiotech
Associate Director, Reinforcement Learning, ML
Location
California + 1 moreAll locations: California, Florida
Posted
88 days ago
Salary
Not specified / year
High School3.5 yrs expExperience acceptedEnglishAWSAzureCloudPythonPy TorchTensorflow
Job Description
• Lead Amgen’s strategy and execution for Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and related reinforcement learning approaches across R&D, medical, operations, and commercial use cases.
• Design, implement, and scale RLHF systems to solve real-world problems that ultimately help us serve patients better and faster.
• Translate complex concepts into clear, actionable strategies for senior leaders and guide teams from idea to impact.
• Lead the design and development of RLHF systems including reward modeling, policy optimization, safety and alignment mechanisms, and evaluation frameworks for large language models and other AI systems.
• Drive hands-on technical execution, particularly for high-impact projects, reviewing architectures, experimentation plans, and code.
• Establish best-practice pipelines for human feedback, partnering closely with internal customer teams to define feedback protocols, annotation quality standards, and governance for RLHF data.
• Define and track success metrics for RLHF systems, balancing offline and online evaluation, A/B tests, safety and robustness criteria, and business or scientific outcomes.
• Collaborate across Amgen leaders to ensure RLHF solutions are aligned with strategy, compliant with policy, and integrated into real workflows.
• Partner with Data, Platform and Technology teams to ensure that RLHF workloads are supported by scalable data platforms, model hosting, experimentation infrastructure, and MLOps best practices.
• Champion responsible and compliant AI, working with Legal, Compliance, and Information Security to implement governance around human feedback, data usage, model behavior, transparency, and risk management in a regulated environment.
• Communicate insights and influence senior stakeholders, creating clear narratives, roadmaps, and recommendations that help executives understand RLHF trade-offs, risks, and opportunities.
Job Requirements
- Doctorate degree and 3 years of Computer Science, IT or related field experience
- Or Master’s degree and 5 years of Computer Science, IT or related field experience
- Or Bachelor’s degree and 7 years of Computer Science, IT or related field experience
- Or Associate’s degree and 12 years of Computer Science, IT or related field experience
- Or High school diploma / GED and 14 years of Computer Science, IT or related field experience
- Certifications on Reinforcement Learning (AWS AI, Azure AI Engineer, Google Cloud ML, etc.) are a plus.
- Deep, hands-on expertise in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and/or advanced reinforcement learning.
- Demonstrated experience deploying RLHF or RL systems into production for real-world applications (e.g., large language models, recommendation systems, decision support tools, or workflow automation), ideally in healthcare, life sciences, or other regulated domains.
- Strong background in modern machine learning and deep learning, with practical experience in Python and frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
- Experience driving sophisticated, cross-functional initiatives, collaborating with non-technical stakeholders (e.g., physicians, scientists, commercial leaders, compliance, legal) and translating needs into impactful AI solutions.
- Strong ability to communicate complex technical topics simply, tailoring content to senior executives and non-technical audiences.
- Experience working with large-scale data and cloud ecosystems (e.g., Azure, Databricks, Snowflake, or similar).
- Demonstrated understanding of responsible AI, safety, and governance, especially in the context of RLHF and LLMs (e.g., bias, robustness, transparency, and guardrail design).
- Familiarity with pharma/biotech, healthcare, or other regulated industries, including an understanding of compliance, privacy, and consent practices related to patient and HCP data.
- Strong project management and organizational skills to manage multiple RLHF initiatives in parallel, ensuring work is prioritized against highest-value opportunities and stakeholders are advised on progress and outcomes!
Benefits
- A comprehensive employee benefits package, including a Retirement and Savings Plan with generous company contributions
- group medical, dental and vision coverage
- life and disability insurance
- flexible spending accounts
- A discretionary annual bonus program, or for field sales representatives, a sales-based incentive plan
- Stock-based long-term incentives
- Award-winning time-off plans
- Flexible work models where possible.
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