AI and Data Science Product Manager

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced Data Scientist, AI/ML Engineer, or AI Product Manager with a passion for Product Management to join our AI capability engineering team. This role is ideal for someone who has demonstrated strong analytical or AI/ML fundamentals and is eager to expand their scope into product ownership of our NLP and Generative AI products. The focus is turning ML, LLM, and Agentic AI prototypes into reliable, maintainable services that enable insights from unstructured and semi-structured data from across our company’s research and development pipeline.

You'll be mentored by a senior product manager and work directly alongside other data scientists, developers, and scientific subject matter experts. You'll gain hands-on exposure to large language model (LLM) systems, see your work accelerate research, and ultimately help bring therapeutics to patients. As you grow, you'll have opportunities to expand your skills by owning one or more products, including leading product discovery, requirements gathering, stakeholder engagement, and adoption. The position is embedded within a cross-disciplinary team of data scientists, bioinformaticians, and engineers dedicated to using cutting-edge AI/ML and data science techniques to drive drug discovery and development.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Product Discovery & Stakeholder Alignment: Partner with business partners and scientists to understand operational pain points, uncover high-value opportunities, and translate ambiguous needs into technical user stories.
• Backlog & Roadmap Prioritization: Own and prioritize your product’s backlog and organize it for regular deliveries.
• Requirement Specifications: Author clear requirements, acceptance criteria, and value capture plans to ensure that technical teams and business stakeholders share a unified definition of success.
• Adoption & Change Management: Connect with users - demo features, lead user enablement sessions, gather structured feedback, and measure adoption metrics to drive continuous product refinement.
• Exploratory Data Analysis: Understand our partners’ structured and unstructured data and how it can be used to address their needs
• Pipeline Integration: Collaborate with Data Engineering teammates to integrate data science prototypes into reliable, production-ready pipelines, adhering to software engineering best practices.
• Validation: Establish clear evaluation metrics and confirm sufficient performance for the business need.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Technical Foundations: Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, git, and data manipulation libraries (e.g., Pandas).
• Model Evaluation & Validation: Demonstrated experience establishing model evaluation frameworks (e.g., defining LLM benchmarks, measuring precision/recall for NLP tasks) to ensure business viability.
• NLP and Agentic AI Exposure: Hands-on experience or academic familiarity with NLP techniques, (e.g., Hugging Face, spaCy, LangChain) to parse unstructured or semi-structured data and to Agentic AI frameworks such as LangGraph.
• Familiarity with LLM and Agentic AI Architectures & Techniques: Practical exposure to Large Language Model (LLM) workflows, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), prompt engineering, and fine-tuning paradigms.
• Eagerness to transition into product management, with prior exposure to drafting technical requirements, defining success metrics, or structuring user stories.
• Exceptional ability to translate complex data science concepts to cross-functional stakeholders and an eagerness to acquire domain knowledge.
• Familiarity with AI Coding Assistants a plus.
• A Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Biomedical Informatics, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Minimum Requirements:

• 3+ years of professional experience in data science, AI/ML Engineering, Agentic AI, AI Product Management, or related discipline.
• HS diploma

Required Skills:

Computer Science, Data Domain, Data Engineering, Data Science, Exploratory Analysis, Generative AI, LangGraph, Pandas Python Library, Product Discovery, Product Improvements, Product Management, Product Ownership, Prompt Engineering, Requirements Management, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Stakeholder Relationship Management, Strategic Planning, System Designs

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:

Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.

As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.  As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.  For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:

EEOC Know Your Rights

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We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.

Learn more about your rights, including under California, Colorado and other US State Acts

The primary location for this posting is:

USA - Pennsylvania - West Point

Where required by law, the compensation range for this role is provided below.

The salary range for the primary location of this role is:

$87,300.00 - $137,400.00

This range reflects the Company's reasonable expectation of the base salary applicable to this role at the time of posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs. The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.

Additional location(s): Please note the salary range above applies to the Primary Location of the position. Where a role has other listed locations, different compensation guidelines may apply. You may find the salary ranges for additional locations below. If the salary range is not listed for the location you are applying to, our Talent Acquisition team will provide further information to you relevant to your location.

Additional location(s) Compensation Information:

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

No Travel Required

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

11/11/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.