Assay Development and Screening Manager

With over 35 nationalities and a range of backgrounds represented in our Benevolent team, we aim to build an inclusive environment where our people can bring their authentic selves to work, be respected for who they are and the exceptional work they do. We welcome and actively encourage applications from all sections of society and are committed to offering equal employment opportunities regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, parental status, disability, age, citizenship, or any other basis. We see our diversity as an asset as we tackle challenging problems that bridge the gap between drug discovery and technology.

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The Role

We are looking for an individual with a proven track record of generating and integrating plate-based pharmacology data from a wide variety of assay technologies and lab-based environments. You will have experience in setting up, running and supporting plate-based in vitro assays; from assay design to development of primary screens, biochemical/whole-cell and high content assays. Through your Pharmaceutical or CRO experience, you will have a thorough understanding of the data elements of preclinical drug discovery, demonstrated by your direct involvement in areas of compound-to-assay workflows, screen-data generation, ELN-data capture and data analysis on platforms such as Dotmatics.

You will be responsible for the supervision and support of a team of enthusiastic and highly motivated biologists within the Discovery Enabling Team (DET), working across various BenevolentAI Projects on assay set-up and screen implementation, in order to generate robust and quality assured data sets to enable confident project decision making. As an experienced drug discovery and exploratory scientist, you will work directly with multiple BAI project teams across our entire portfolio, including DMPK, in vitro and in vivo Biology, Safety, Chemistry and Informatics, to drive our AI-driven drug discovery pipeline.

Primary Responsibilities

Lead a small team of biologists to support the BAI Drug Discovery Portfolio
Supervise and manage internal and external CRO Project teams in the areas of Primary pharmacology, Selectivity and Safety pharmacology screening
Working closely with BAI function leads, drive assay development and coordination of interactions with external CROs and Outsourcing activities
Train and mentor team members to maximise their potential and develop the capabilities of the team to achieve project, personal and organisational goals
Drive the strategic direction of our screening activities, to enable the design and delivery of assays
Provide advice on Assay Development and troubleshooting of biochemical and cellular assays, data analysis, reporting and upload of data to databases and electronic lab notebooks
Coordinate with key stakeholders; Target Identification program leads, drug discovery core teams, safety pharmacology, DMPK, Project Management and external CROs

We are looking for someone with

Experience of working in a laboratory environment in a supervisory capacity
Proven experience in the development of assays for hit/lead identification of small molecules within the pharmaceutical, biologics and/or biotech sector
Excellent knowledge of screening technologies (for example ELISA, HTRF, FMAT, proliferation, signalling, reporter, high throughput screening, high content screening, flow cytometry), automation and assay optimisation and validation
A collaborative working style with good organisation and excellent communication skills
Proven experience in training and developing others in scientific techniques
Familiarity with the use of informatics tools in a drug discovery settings; such as Excel/Excel Fit, Prism, Genedata or ActivityBase
Experience working in a cross-discipline team to develop in-house tools or workflows for drug discovery

We share a passion for being part of a mission that matters, and we are always looking for curious and collaborative people who share our values and want to be part of our journey. If that sounds like a fit for you, hit the apply button and join us.

About us

BenevolentAI unites AI with human expertise to discover new and more effective medicines. Our unique computational R&D platform spans every step of the drug discovery process, powering an in-house pipeline of over 25 drug programmes. We advance our mission to reinvent drug discovery by harnessing the power of a diverse team, rich with different backgrounds, experiences, opinions and personalities. In our offices in London and New York and research facility in Cambridge (UK), we work in highly collaborative, multidisciplinary teams, harnessing skills across biology, chemistry, engineering, AI, machine learning, informatics, precision medicine and drug discovery.

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