Patent Counsel - Chemistry

Your work will change lives. Including your own. 

The Impact You’ll Make

We are seeking a strategic and scientifically fluent Patent Counsel with deep expertise in chemistry to shape and lead the intellectual property strategy behind our chemistry platform and therapeutic programs. This is a highly cross-functional role for someone who sees themselves as a business partner first — and a lawyer second.

You will operate at the intersection of chemistry, AI-driven drug discovery, and IP strategy, partnering closely with chemists, computational scientists, development teams, and business development leaders to translate complex science into forward-looking, globally aligned IP strategy. You will help ensure our innovations are protected in ways that enable clinical progress, competitive differentiation, and long-term impact.

If you’re passionate about biotech, energized by the convergence of AI and chemistry, and motivated to embed deeply with the business, we’d love to meet you.

In this role, you will:

• Develop and execute IP strategies for chemistry programs and platform innovations across our portfolio 
• Evaluate program maturity and recommend appropriate patent filing, prosecution, and protection strategies
• Conduct and oversee FTO analyses and advise on risk mitigation, while helping guide our global filing strategy and coordinate international prosecution
• Support IND-related IP considerations and life-cycle planning
• Occasionally draft or substantively contribute to patent applications (approximately once or twice per quarter)
• Ensure filings align with broader business and clinical strategy

The Team You’ll Join 

You’ll join a collaborative and mission-driven Legal team that partners closely with our scientific and business organizations. As the primary chemistry-focused IP leader, you’ll serve as a trusted scientific domain expert within Legal, working independently while deeply integrated with R&D and Business Development.

Our culture values curiosity, humility, high EQ, and low ego. We operate with low friction and high trust — empowering teammates to lead from their expertise while staying closely connected to the broader mission.

The Experience You’ll Need

• Minimum 7 years of relevant IP experience with a mix of law firm and in-house experience
• Strong background in chemistry, biochemistry, or related field (PhD preferred; Master’s or Bachelor’s with deep industry experience considered)
• Experience supporting clinical-stage assets, pharmaceutical, or biotechnology programs
• Experience in patent prosecution (strongly preferred foundation), with exposure to litigation and/or transactional IP matters
• Demonstrated ability to work independently as a scientific subject matter expert

Nice to Haves:

• Experience supporting small molecule drug discovery programs
• Exposure to AI-enabled or computational drug discovery environments
• Experience with licensing (in-licensing/out-licensing), BD diligence, and alliance support
• Familiarity with global patent strategy across US/EU/UK and other key jurisdictions

Working Location & Compensation:

Making SLC or NYC your home base is ideal, however, we will consider remote work for this position. We ask that remote employees commit to regular on-site visits for routine work and departmental events. 

At Recursion, we believe that every employee should be compensated fairly. Based on the skill and level of experience required for this role, the estimated current annual base range for this role is $261,800 to $337,700 (USD). You will also be eligible for an annual bonus and equity compensation, as well as a comprehensive benefits package. 

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The Values We Hope You Share:

• We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust. 
• We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.
• We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.
• We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.
• We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy—leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together. 
• We are One Recursion. True cross-functional collaboration is about trust, clarity, humility, and impact. Through sharing, we can be greater than the sum of our individual capabilities.

Our values underpin the employee experience at Recursion. They are the character and personality of the company demonstrated through how we communicate, support one another, spend our time, make decisions, and celebrate collectively.

More About Recursion

Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) is a clinical stage TechBio company leading the space by decoding biology to radically improve lives. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, a platform built across diverse technologies that continuously generate one of the world’s largest proprietary biological and chemical datasets. Recursion leverages sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to distill from its dataset a collection of trillions of searchable relationships across biology and chemistry unconstrained by human bias. By commanding massive experimental scale — up to millions of wet lab experiments weekly — and massive computational scale — owning and operating one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Recursion is uniting technology, biology and chemistry to advance the future of medicine.

Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City, where it is a founding member of BioHive, the Utah life sciences industry collective. Recursion also has offices in Toronto, Montréal, New York, London, Oxford area, and the San Francisco Bay area. Learn more at www.Recursion.com, or connect on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation. 

Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Recursion Pharmaceuticals and its affiliate companies do not accept resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Recursion or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Recursion’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Recursion, and Recursion will not owe any referral or other fees. Our team will communicate directly with candidates who are not represented by an agent or intermediary unless otherwise agreed to prior to interviewing for the job.