Medicinal Drug Design Lead

Medicinal Drug Design Lead, London or Lausanne

Your impact

As part of the ongoing expansion of our Drug Design and Medical Research function, we are looking to recruit a number of Medicinal Chemistry positions in our Medicinal Drug Design Team.

Working as part of the Medicinal Drug Design Team, you will work as a chemistry lead to deliver scientific expertise and strategic direction to fulfil milestone objectives on our portfolio projects. You will be supporting the business alongside world leading AI/ML Drug Design Platform teams, and will work collaboratively to drive both improvements in the Platform and apply this to real drug design projects.

Ready to elevate your scientific career? Isomorphic Labs offers ambitious scientists a unique environment to tackle stimulating challenges, pushing your boundaries and accelerating your personal and professional growth.

Please note that this is a scientific leadership role, where we will need you to take an active hands-on role as an individual contributor rather than being a people manager.

What you will do

• Apply your knowledge and track record of modern drug design / discovery principles and synthetic organic chemistry to execute Drug Design programs and to provide strategic input and technical direction to our Platform teams.
• Collaborate both internally and with third party organisations, interacting within multidisciplinary teams, to support data-driven delivery of high quality scientific solutions to complex technical problems.
• Represent the company externally, interacting with existing and prospective collaborators and Contract Research Organisations (CROs).
• Manage CRO resource and other members of the growing team, mentoring and supporting their development.
• Prepare detailed scientific proposals and reports to support new and ongoing programs.
• Embrace and champion our culture of inclusion and continuous professional development.

Skills and qualifications

Essential:

• PhD in Chemistry or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
• Good foundation in medicinal chemistry with a minimum of 5+ years previous industrial experience operating as an individual contributor within a pharma/biotech/CRO setting.
• Experience in execution of drug discovery programs from HitID to Candidate delivery with a consistent track record, working in multidisciplinary teams.
• Experience in a lead chemist role.
• Experience and expertise working on Lead Optimisation programs, with familiarity of optimisation of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK).
• Experience of working with and closely managing CRO resource.
• Track record of authorship of relevant scientific manuscripts and inventorship of composition of matter patents.

Nice to have:

• Direct experience of working in a Pharma, Biotech or CRO on drug discovery collaborations, ideally in a chemistry or project lead role.
• Experience of contributing to Structure-Based Drug Design problems.
• Experience of successful application of fragment-based drug design approaches.
• Excited about this opportunity? We encourage you to apply by Friday, May 23rd, 2025.

Hybrid working

It’s hugely important for us to share knowledge and build strong relationships with each other, and we find it easier to do this if we spend time together in person. This is why we follow a hybrid model, and would require you to be able to come into the office 3 days a week (currently Tuesday, Wednesday, and one other day depending on which team you’re in). If you have additional needs that would prevent you from following this hybrid approach, we’d be happy to talk through these if you’re selected for an initial screening call.