Join us.
Principal Scientist - Early Discovery Chemistry
The Company
BenevolentAI unites technology with human intelligence to re-engineer drug discovery and deliver life-changing medicines. We have developed the Benevolent Platform®, a drug discovery platform built on powerful data foundations with state of the art machine learning and AI technology. Our technology empowers scientists to decipher the vast and complex code underlying human biology, find new ways to treat disease and personalise medicines to patients. Benevolent has active in-house R&D drug programmes in disease areas such as neurodegeneration, immunology, oncology and inflammation and has research and commercial collaborations with leading pharmaceutical and research organisations. The company is headquartered in London with a research facility in Cambridge (UK) and a further office in New York.
Who we are
We are an eclectic bunch at Benevolent, united by our belief that innovative thinking and purposeful technology can truly change outcomes for the better. Our mission is to re-engineer drug discovery and deliver life-changing medicines for patients in need and we do this by applying AI, machine learning and other advanced technologies to reinvent the ways drugs are discovered and developed. We strive to bring together unique skills and perspectives across biology, chemistry, engineering, AI research, informatics, precision medicine and drug discovery.
The Role
The Early Discovery Chemistry Team at BenevolentAI collaborate with multiple disciplines and functions to enable validation of our AI-derived target predictions and facilitate their entry into our small molecule portfolio. We are looking for an experienced medicinal chemist with excellent communication skills to provide scientific leadership across our growing and diverse pipeline.
The role will involve leadership of chemistry activities on multiple tech deployments in Target ID, including chemogenomics efforts and small molecule project feasibility assessments. Additionally, the role will include leadership of exploratory chemistry projects, such as evaluating novel modalities and therapeutic strategies, and Hit ID of undrugged targets. As part of this work, the role will require close collaboration with biologists, chemoinformaticians and computational chemists, UX/UI designers, software engineers, NLP researchers and ML scientists, to help build the tools required to accelerate the drug discovery process.
The role is located at our London headquarters and is non-lab based.
Primary Responsibilities
- Chemistry leadership on multiple tech deployments in Target ID, including chemogenomics efforts, deconvolution of biological assay data, and small molecule project feasibility assessments.
- The leadership of exploratory chemistry projects, such as evaluating novel modalities and therapeutic strategies. This will involve defining the research strategy, co-ordinating the synthesis of key compounds and collaboration with biologists and DMPK scientists to reach key decision points.
- Collaborate with data scientists, UX/UI designers, NLP researchers and software engineers for the development of new tools to support chemogenomics and target progressability assessments.
- Work closely with chemoinformaticians and computational chemists to develop and apply our structural models for binding site detection and Hit ID of novel binding sites and undrugged targets.
- Establish and maintain close working relationships with Senior Management for project planning, alignment and delivery.
We are looking for someone with
- PhD or equivalent experience in organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry or chemical biology.
- 5+ years experience in an industrial setting applying medicinal chemistry expertise to the successful advancement of Drug Discovery projects to key milestones.
- Experience of working at the interface between biology and chemistry, and providing critical assessment of potential drug targets and/or tool compounds.
- A track record of significant, innovative personal contributions to the progression of drug discovery programmes.
- A strong team player with an ability to work seamlessly with experts from many disciplines and mentor direct reports.
- You will be an excellent communicator, through verbal, written and electronic media, able to freely collaborate with internal and external colleagues. You will continuously share knowledge with other members of the team.
- You will be comfortable and thrive working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and on multiple projects with changing priorities and deadlines.
- Nice to have: Experience in early discovery chemistry, chemical biology and/or computational chemistry approaches.
Together, we envision a world in which no disease goes untreated. If you are benevolent, curious, want to tackle real world problems and are willing to embrace new ideas, hit that ‘apply’ button and join us.
Important Note
It has come to our attention that unfortunately fraudsters have been falsely offering jobs and set-up fake interviews under the guise of being a Benevolent recruiter. We therefore advise you to be very stringent about who is reaching out to you. Any enquiry from our team will only be made via the email careers@benevolent.ai or an email from this domain @benevolent.ai. Please flag any suspicious contact request to hello@benevolent.ai
