Sr. AI/ML Engineer - Life Sciences
Exact Sciences Corporation · La Jolla - 11085 N Torrey Pines Rd
$152,000–$228,000from the description
Jul 12, 2026
La Jolla - 11085 N Torrey Pines Rd
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual contributor role focused on designing, building, and deploying machine learning and AI solutions applied to biological, genomic, and clinical data in the context of cancer screening and precision oncology. The work spans the full development lifecycle — from requirements gathering through deployment — in close collaboration with biostatisticians, bioinformaticians, and data scientists. Suits someone with deep expertise in modern ML techniques, including deep learning and large language models, who can also mentor junior engineers and help shape an organizational AI strategy.
Senior level · 3+ years · San Diego, CA · Master's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 20 people in the San Diego, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 10–30
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $133,871 (middle half $95,474–$167,770). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The degree requirement is a Ph.D. (preferred) OR a Master's plus 4 years of experience in lieu of a Ph.D. Because equivalent experience is explicitly accepted alongside the Master's, the hard floor is a Master's degree — set accordingly.
The posted salary range reflects the California (San Diego) figures ($152,000–$228,000); a national range of $123,000–$209,000 is also stated for other US locations.
The NLP skill is listed alongside 'image processing and computer vision' and 'image and pattern recognition' as alternative qualifying domains — candidates need demonstrated experience in at least one of these areas, not all three; alternatives are captured accordingly.
TensorFlow, PyTorch, and scikit-learn are presented as interchangeable ML framework options ('such as'); TensorFlow is used as the primary name with the others in alternatives.
MLOps appears only under Preferred Qualifications and is described as 'basic knowledge,' so it is marked preferred.
Life sciences/molecular diagnostics experience and cancer biology knowledge appear exclusively under Preferred Qualifications.
The role is SOC-ambiguous between Data Scientists (15-2051) and Software Developers (15-1252): the posting emphasizes ML/AI algorithm development and statistical modeling (pointing to 15-2051) but also stresses software implementation, deployment, and engineering collaboration (pointing to 15-1252). Data science/ML modeling is the primary framing.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): transformer architecture, open-source AI models.
Read the full posting
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