Associate Director, Data Science

Company Description

Publicis Groupe is a global leader in communication and is positioned at every step of the value chain, from consulting to execution, combining marketing transformation and digital business transformation. Through a unified and fluid organization, Publicis Groupe partners with its clients across communication, media, data and technology to ensure access to the full breadth of capabilities in every market. Present in over 100 countries, Publicis Groupe employs around 103,000 professionals.

Overview

The Data Scientist is a hands-on individual contributor supporting the analytical work of the Vice President, Data Science. You will work directly on the VP's projects, taking direction and inputs from senior team members and turning them into rigorous, well-documented analysis, models, and deliverables that support pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical technology clients.

This role suits someone who thrives in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment. Requirements will not always arrive fully formed; you will be comfortable working from partial direction, asking good clarifying questions, making reasonable assumptions, and moving work forward without waiting to be told every next step. You will contribute across three core areas: HCP targeting and segmentation built on real-world and prescribing data; patient and consumer audience analytics, including journey and adherence modeling; and ML model development supporting marketing activation and measurement.

Responsibilities

Data Science & Technical Delivery

• Build, test, and refine machine learning models and predictive analytics solutions for life sciences commercial and marketing challenges.
• Contribute across the ML pipeline — data acquisition, feature engineering, model training, and validation — with support from senior team members on production deployment.
• Work within a complex, multi-source data environment — claims, prescribing, real-world, and consumer data — learning quickly where the right data lives and flagging gaps.
• Monitor data quality and maintain data science pipelines for client data assets, including first-party and third-party data.
• Maintain analytical quality, reproducibility, and clear documentation across your own work.

Audience Development & Activation

• Build and maintain HCP targeting and segmentation models using NPI-level physician data, prescribing and treatment trends, and specialty-level behavioral signals.
• Develop patient and consumer audience models spanning condition-level segmentation, patient journey and line-of-therapy analytics, adherence prediction, and behavioral propensity scoring.
• Integrate and analyze real-world datasets (IQVIA, Symphony, MMIT, and comparable sources) to generate insights that are both scientifically rigorous and commercially actionable.
• Scale and deploy custom audiences across marketing activation platforms and publishers, working within privacy-safe, de-identified, and clean room environments.

Stakeholder Partnership

• Take inputs and direction from brand and account teams and translate them into well-scoped analyses, checking assumptions along the way.
• Collaborate with audience strategy, media and marketing activation, and account teams to support the development of client recommendations.
• Summarize findings and model results for senior team members and internal stakeholders, and contribute to client-facing materials.

Standards, Collaboration & Growth

• Work collaboratively with teammates across data, engineering, and technology to bring analytical solutions into practice.
• Contribute to strong team practices by documenting your work, following shared standards, and creating reusable code and tools.
• Stay curious about emerging AI and machine learning approaches, and share ideas that could strengthen our work.
• Take ownership of your projects while communicating openly about progress, priorities, and where you may need support.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in data science, predictive analytics, or a related quantitative discipline, with life sciences, healthcare, or agency exposure a plus.
• Working proficiency in Python and/or R for machine learning and statistical modeling, and solid SQL skills for querying large, complex datasets.
• Experience building ML models — supervised and unsupervised methods, classification, regression, clustering, and propensity modeling — with exposure to production deployment.
• Strong communication and data storytelling skills; able to translate complex analytical findings into clear, actionable recommendations for commercial and marketing stakeholders.
• Comfort operating in an ambiguous, fast-changing environment — able to act on incomplete direction, ask the right clarifying questions, and make progress independently while keeping senior stakeholders informed.
• Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field (Master's preferred).

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with medical and pharmacy claims data, real-world evidence, HCP/NPI-level datasets, line-of-therapy logic, and HIPAA-compliant, privacy-safe environments.
• Experience with patient, HCP, or consumer audience modeling in a life sciences marketing context — including patient journey analytics, condition-level segmentation, or adherence modeling.
• Experience with cloud-based analytics platforms such as AWS, Databricks, Snowflake, or similar tools used across the Publicis network.
• Familiarity with life sciences data vendors including IQVIA, Symphony Health, Norstella/MMIT, or comparable real-world data providers.
• Exposure to generative AI, LLM-based applications, agentic workflows, or emerging AI tooling.

Additional Information

Our Publicis Groupe motto “Viva La Différence” means we’re better together, and we believe that our differences make us stronger. It means we honor and celebrate all identities, across all facets of intersectionality, and it underpins all that we do as an organization. We are focused on fostering belonging and creating equitable & inclusive experiences for all talent.

Publicis Groupe provides robust and inclusive benefit programs and policies to support the evolving and diverse needs of our talent and enable every person to grow and thrive. Our benefits package includes medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401K, as well as parental and family care leave, family forming assistance, tuition reimbursement, and flexible time off.

If you require accommodation or assistance with the application or onboarding process specifically, please contact [email protected].

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Veterans Encouraged to Apply.

Compensation Range: USD $112,290.00 - USD $179,712.00/Annually. This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on the skills, qualifications, and experience of the applicant along with the requirements of the position, and the Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time. Temporary roles may be eligible to participate in our freelancer/temporary employee medical plan through a third-party benefits administration system once certain criteria have been met. For regular roles, the Company will offer medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401k, and paid time off. The Company anticipates the application deadline for this job posting will be 11/17/2026.