Senior Associate, Biological Data Science

Senior Associate, Biological Data Science

Copenhagen · Full time · Permanent

In short

You become the person the client calls. You own the relationship, you stand behind the delivery, and you build real depth in one field instead of being thrown between unrelated projects.

"Senior" here is about ownership, not years served. The sweet spot is two to five years of consulting experience.

About the company

We are recruiting for a Danish company in Copenhagen that builds and delivers software for the earliest stage of drug discovery.

When a pharmaceutical company develops a new drug, it has to decide which molecules are worth testing in the lab. The number of possibilities is effectively infinite. The lab can handle around a hundred. This company builds the tools that find the right hundred — from choosing the target and the modality through to designing and screening the molecules.

The business model is a technology-driven consultancy. Their platform covers roughly 90% of the need out of the box, and the last 10% is built bespoke for each research project. That is why they deliver in a fraction of the time their competitors need.

They are around ten people, profitable, and the entire business has been built on referral. Their clients are pharma and biotech companies.

The role

The company has consultants who do the work at the client site, and a few more experienced people who own the client relationship itself. They need more of the second kind. That is you.

• You own the client relationship — their single point of contact, and the person who holds the whole picture of what was promised and what is being delivered.
• You deliver yourself. This is not a project management role. Clients will not accept someone who moves tickets around a board — you need to understand the problem and be part of solving it.
• You are seen as a leader, not an engineer. That is the difference between being in the room and running the meeting.
• You think on your feet. The client raises a problem mid-meeting and you can sketch a way forward while you are still sitting there.
• You build depth. One field, one discipline, one kind of client — and you get genuinely good at it.

What you need

• Two to five years in consulting — IT, technology, data or management. You have delivered at client sites and know how a client relationship feels when it is working and when it is not.
• Technical level of a data scientist. You can code and follow the models. You do not need to be the strongest technologist in the building — that seat is taken.
• A track record of moving. You have progressed faster than your peers, or done something else that was objectively hard and finished it.
• Composure under pressure. The hard part of this job is the moment a client asks something you do not have an answer to. Going defensive is not an option.
• People like being in a room with you. It is not on any CV, and it still decides how much business comes out of a relationship.

Nice to have

• Life science, pharma or biotech exposure. A pharma client on a past project counts. Fewer than half of the current team have a life science background.
• Danish. A real advantage with Danish clients, but several of the team and several of the clients do not speak it. For the right person, language is not a blocker.
• A computer science degree is not needed. Several of the strongest people on the team come from engineering or AI.

Why you would say yes

• You become an expert in something. The most common reason good consultants leave the big firms is that they are moved between clients and never get truly good at anything. Here you pick one field and build hard, tangible skills around it.
• The work matters. What you do ends up in medicines meant to help people.
• You own the client from day one. No partner above you taking the meeting. Ten people, no layers, direct access to the people who decide.
• There is somewhere to grow. The company would rather develop its commercial leaders from within. If that is the direction you want, the path exists.