What are the responsibilities and job description for the Associate Director / Director, Computational Chemistry position at Aerial Talent?
Well-funded biotech in SSF seeks a Computational Chemistry Director or Associate Director with experience in CADD- and structure-based design for lead optimization of small molecules to advance the pipeline of innovative therapeutics toward the clinic.
**Onsite in South San Francisco Monday through Friday (5 days/week)**
Highlights:
- Reports to SVP, Discovery
- Potential to have one or more direct reports
- Two lead targets: CNS oncology neurodegeneration
- Financial runway forecasted through Spring 2027
- ~25 full-time employees
Responsibilities:
- Provide strategic leadership and hands-on execution of our CADD efforts
- Collaborate closely with chemists and biologists on virtual screening, hit identification and structure-based design
- Guide the optimization of drug candidates that induce protein degradation
- Use machine-learning (ML) to build in silica models to predict DMPK properties
- Perform and automate high throughput molecular dynamics simulations to predict protein function and protein-ligand binding
- Utilize established tools and design new methods/tools
- Scientific programming as needed
Required Qualifications:
- PhD in Computational Chemistry or related discipline
- 7 years of relevant experience in drug discovery
- Computer aided drug design (CADD) /structure- and ligand-based design for small molecules
- Dotmatics, Schrodinger, MOE, OpenEye, or Gaussian software
- QSAR, QSPR, and conformational analysis
- Molecular mechanics and dynamics simulations
Preferred Skills & Knowledge:
- Understanding of in vitro and in vivo DMPK principles
- Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) approaches to predictive modeling
- Quantum mechanics methods
- Statistical design of experiments (DoE)
- Multiparameter optimization
- Experimental assay methods and technology for protein-ligand interactions
- Programming with languages such as perl, python, or C
- Cheminformatics / database algorithms
- Emerging drug modalities such as covalent inhibitors, bifunctionals, molecular glues and/or PROTACs
Salary : $170,000 - $230,000