Lead AI Engineer

About IQVIA Patient Finder

In a world where information is instantly accessible, hospitals remain an exception. Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems are designed to support clinical workflows, but they often fall short when it comes to secondary data usage—such as identifying patients for clinical trials, conducting medical research, or assessing care quality.

IQVIA Patient Finder bridges this gap. Our search engine empowers medical professionals to find patient cohorts and extract meaningful insights, all while strictly adhering to privacy regulations. Currently deployed in over 40 hospitals across the Netherlands and Belgium, Patient Finder is expanding internationally. As a scale-up within a global organization, we offer the best of both worlds: a proven product and the freedom to innovate.

Role Overview

We're looking for a Lead AI Engineer who is passionate about improving healthcare through cutting-edge technology. You'll lead a team of 4–6 AI engineers, shaping the roadmap, driving innovation, and contributing hands-on to development. You'll work on impactful projects such as Generative AI, Named Entity Recognition/Linking (NER/NEL), multilingual NLP, and continuous learning on complex healthcare datasets.

This is a unique opportunity to define the future of AI in healthcare—balancing technical leadership with strategic vision.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and grow the AI team, fostering a culture of collaboration, learning, and excellence.
• Contribute directly to the codebase and serve as the primary liaison with other development teams.
• Drive internationalization of NLP components to support multiple languages.
• Own work intake, prioritization, and line management of the AI team.
• Guide projects from concept to production-ready solutions.
• Collaborate closely with the Product Owner to define deliverables and milestones.
• Research and apply state-of-the-art NLP and ML methodologies.
• Ensure AI components integrate seamlessly with our search engine and data warehouse.

Requirements

• 6+ years of industry experience in AI/NLP.
• Strong software engineering skills, especially in integrating AI into production systems.
• Proven leadership experience, including mentoring and team management.
• Expertise in supervised and unsupervised learning, deep learning, and NLP.
• Ability to communicate complex concepts clearly to cross-functional teams.
• Experience with production-grade ML/NLP deployments.
• Strategic thinking around data science product planning under uncertainty.
• Holistic understanding of ML pipelines within larger systems.
• Strong problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
• Ability to read and implement ideas from scientific papers.
• Proficiency in Python for ML/NLP tasks; other languages (e.g., R, Go, Rust, Java) are a plus.
• Excellent English communication skills (written and verbal).

Nice to Have

• Experience in healthcare, life sciences, clinical trials, or pharmaceutical data.
• Based in the Netherlands, to occasionally join in-person team and company activities.

About Us

• The Patient Finder team includes ~30 professionals across App, Data, and AI/ML squads, plus QA, Deployment, Support, and Consultancy.
• We're part of IQVIA's broader healthcare product portfolio across EMEA.
• Flexible work environment: choose between office, home, or hybrid. We host monthly team days and some squads meet weekly.

IQVIA is a leading global provider of clinical research services, commercial insights and healthcare intelligence to the life sciences and healthcare industries. We create intelligent connections to accelerate the development and commercialization of innovative medical treatments to help improve patient outcomes and population health worldwide. Learn more