Head of Digital Health Data Science

About the role:

At Alcon, we aspire to lead the world in innovating life-changing vision products because when people see brilliantly, they live brilliantly. As a global leader in eye care, we believe in innovating especially through cutting edge technology. We are on a journey to offer the widest array of eye care and eye health offerings with products that can treat the entire eye at each stage of life.

Our Digital Health team is harnessing technology to build a leading portfolio of digital health solutions that will transform the eye care experience for medical professionals to patients and enable improved patient outcomes – from a predictive health care delivery platform harnessing ML and analytics to innovative medical device software.

As Head of Digital Health Data Science, you will be responsible to drive Alcon digital health’s advanced analytics and machine learning (ML)/AI strategy, and product roadmap, and lead the development and implementation of analytics and ML/AI solutions on the Alcon digital health platform. You will be a champion and advocate for driving the sustainable value creation from data and AI, both for our customers and Alcon. We are a fast-growing team, which will give you the opportunity to shape our ways of working and culture – think start-up, but inside a global leader in eye care. We are looking for someone who is a strategic thinker and problem solver.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead various stakeholders (eg. product, engineering team, and external ML/AI partners) to develop advanced analytics and ML/AI solution roadmap, identify key requirements, and drive the validation of requirements by working with both internal and external customers.
• Build advanced analytics and ML/AI product prototype and POC for customer demo and providing insights on full implementation requirements.
• Lead cross-functional teams to develop, implement, and monitor the production-scale analytics and ML/AI products on Alcon digital health platform.
• Spearhead analytics initiatives to drive actionable insights from data collected through Alcon digital health products, supporting product deliveries and aligning with business objectives.
• Collaborate with product and data engineering team to build modular and reusable architecture and data pipelines supporting the analytics product vision and strategy.
• Build, manage, and mentor a global team of high-performing data scientists and data analysts.
• Foster a culture of creativity, collaboration, speed, innovation, and excellence, adhering to best practices and high standards.
• Be a champion and advocate of the value of data and analytics including engaging executive leadership and business stakeholders to enable data-driven decision-making.
• Act as a thought leader and stay up-to-date in the field of machine learning, AI, and deep learning
• Ensure that department achieves objectives and project completion within budget and time frame.

Competency Profile

• Analytic Leader: A result-driven leader with extensive experience in building and leading high-performing analytics and data science teams. Demonstrates a proven track record of successfully developing and launching analytics and AI products in the healthcare industry.
• Thought leader and domain expert: Expert in digital health and analytics/AI, who is well-versed in the industry trends and technology landscape.
• Collaborative Leader: A leader who thrives in dynamic, cross-functional team environments, fostering an open and respectful atmosphere. Possesses a team-first mindset, valuing diverse perspectives and contributing to a collaborative work culture.
• Positive and Adaptable: Approaches challenges with a positive and can-do attitude. Willing to challenge the status quo, finding new solutions and driving out of the box ideas.
• Passionate Problem Solver: Excels in navigating ambiguous situations, leveraging a wealth of experience to identify problems and remove roadblocks for agile teams.
• Effective Communicator and Influencer: A strong communicator with exceptional influencing skills to effectively communicate with all levels of the organization (verbally and written); Proven ability to effectively build productive cross-departmental relationships and drive alignment among leaders on critical decisions.

Key Requirements/Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• MS or Ph.D (preferred) degree in a quantitative discipline (e.g., statistics, operations research, bioinformatics, economics, computer science, mathematics, physics, etc.)
• Minimum 7 years of relevant work experience, including expertise in predictive modeling, classification, recommendation systems, personalization, NLP, image models, generative AI, business intelligence and visualizations, etc.
• Proven track record of analyzing large-scale complex data sets, building and deploying machine learning algorithms from prototyping to production and maintenance.
• Deep understanding of machine learning and deep learning methods with their underlying theory and math
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with machine learning and deep learning frameworks and tools, such as TensorFlow, Keras, Spark ML, PyTorch, etc.
• Experience with MLOps tools (eg. Sagemaker, Vertex AI)
• Proficient in at least one of the common ML programming language, such as Python, R or Scala.
• Experience with public clouds such as AWS, GCP, and Azure.
• Extensive experience in Dashboard/BI and Data visualization tools (eg. Tableau, Quicksight)
• 3+ years of experience and proven track record of successfully leading high performing data analytics teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication and presentation skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in building and launching large scale AI-based software products.
• Deep industry knowledge in healthcare, and hands-on experience in various healthcare data (eg. EMR, claims, IQVIA, medical imaging, IOT devices data)

Alcon is an Equal Opportunity Employer and participates in E-Verify. Alcon takes pride in maintaining a diverse environment and our policies are not to discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status. Alcon is also committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or in order to perform the essential functions of a position, please send an email to alcon.recruitment@alcon.com and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.