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Senior Scientist, Computational Chemistry

Employer
Pfizer
Location
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Salary
Competitive
Closing date
Jul 2, 2021

View more

Sector
Science, Pharmaceutical
Hours
Full Time
Organization Type
Corporate
Jobseeker Type
Professional
Pfizer Medicine Design focuses on small molecule drug discovery efforts in multiple disease areas. Our location in Cambridge, MA is at the center of biomedical innovation and facilitates interaction and collaboration with local universities and biotech companies. We are seeking a highly motivated computational chemist with experience in drug discovery that spans multiple target classes to join our drug discovery research group. The successful candidate will be responsible for developing/applying computational methods and workflows to support all aspects of small molecule drug discovery ranging from lead identification to candidate selection. You will work closely with computational and medicinal chemists as well as project teams across Research Units such as Rare Diseases and Inflammation and Immunology and will utilize your computational chemistry and scientific programming experience to address challenging drug discovery problems. The candidate should have good communication and organizational skills and an ability to work in a flexible, dynamic team environment. As an independent researcher and integral member of project teams, you will have opportunities to make numerous direct contributions to Pfizer's drug discovery efforts.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

The primary responsibilities of suitable candidates will be the support of drug discovery projects by developing and delivering timely, high-quality computational solutions and impacting project teams through understanding target-ligand binding, structure based and ligand-based lead optimization, virtual screening, library design and ADME in-silico modeling.
  • Participate on multiple interdisciplinary project teams and play a key role in compound design
  • Apply molecular modeling and dynamics, conformational analysis, homology modeling and pharmacophore hypothesis generation to compound design
  • Design compound libraries and apply virtual screening to identify new lead matter
  • Use established AI/ML models to support and complement project team drug-design activities
  • Analyze potential drug targets to assess their druggability and determine the most promising approaches for finding small molecule hits


BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
  • The position requires a PhD in computational chemistry or a related discipline and 1+ years of experience in computer-aided drug design.
  • Advanced knowledge of computational chemistry principles and knowledge of how to apply these techniques to pharmaceutical research projects is desired.
  • Experience with a wide variety of commercial software, experience in computer scripting and programming and significant experience using Linux/UNIX.
  • Demonstrated ability to work in a collaborative environment as exemplified by a strong publication record.


PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Preferred candidates will have expertise in one or more of these areas and be familiar with the other concepts:

  • Computational chemistry concepts and techniques (such as structure-based and ligand-based drug design; protein-ligand docking and scoring; virtual screening; chemoinformatics; QSAR and predictive modeling; structural bioinformatics; homology modeling; molecular dynamics simulations; free energy perturbation methodologies; and application of quantum chemical calculations in the context of drug design).
  • Standard computational chemistry software (such as the Schrodinger suite; CCG MOE; Pipeline Pilot; Gaussian; and AMBER)
  • Data science and machine learning algorithms and tools (e.g. Random Forest, Deep Neural Networks, Generative Chemistry)
  • Programming skills (e.g. Python and C/C++); familiarity with debugging and profiling tools; experience with using scientific, numeric, and chemistry libraries
  • Drug design, medicinal chemistry, and/or biochemistry.


ORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
  • Will report in to the Director of Computational Chemistry, within the chemistry department responsible for Inflammation and Immunology, Rare Diseases and Chemical Biology research.
  • The candidate will be an integral part of project teams and work closely with medicinal chemistry designers, synthetic chemists, pharmacologists, in vivo biologists, structural biologists, and drug metabolism scientists.
  • The candidate will also have many opportunities to work with computational chemists working on other diseases areas, machine learning experts, computational biologists and scientific computing specialists.


Other Job Details:
  • Eligible for Relocation Package: yes
  • Eligible for Employee Referral Bonus: yes


#LI-PFE

Sunshine Act

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EEO & Employment Eligibility

Pfizer is committed to equal opportunity in the terms and conditions of employment for all employees and job applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or gender expression, national origin, disability or veteran status. Pfizer also complies with all applicable national, state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act and IRCA. Pfizer is an E-Verify employer.

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