Senior Data Scientist, Cheminformatics

Key Skills

Python Programming, NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, Algorithms

Job Description

Recursion is the clinical-stage biotechnology company industrializing drug discovery by decoding biology. Recursion leverages sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to infer biological relationships. 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.

Eight years ago, Recursion was manufacturing and staining plates by hand. Today, we’re able to process and scan more than a million experiments every week. In the last year we’ve been able to take a compound from screen to preclinical data package in almost six months and put multiple molecules in the clinic with line of sight to our impact on patients. Next, we are building a Digital Chemistry team to help translate biology inferences to discovery leads and advance pharmaceutical projects in unprecedented fashion. Our drug discovery strategies are map and data-driven rather than target and exec-driven, revealing destinations you might never have considered. It is an audacious goal, but it isn’t a dream or science fiction. We’re already doing it!

While we offer cutting-edge tools and an amazing lab, the secret sauce is our people. Our organization structure and culture isn't driven by politics or ego, it is designed first and foremost to help you do your best work. We live and work by values that we see as the strategic differentiators that give us a competitive advantage, supporting better and faster work without burnout and encouraging us to make leaps where others take steps. This is a place where people in every role and every level make the bold bets that create large leaps forward on a regular basis.

The Impact You’ll Make

As a Cheminformatics Data Scientist you will be an essential member of drug project teams, working with biologists and chemists to advance candidate drugs through screening and development, and with other data scientists on improving our algorithms for drug discovery. You will bring your unique approach and innovative thinking in developing scalable solutions in drug discovery that immediately impact decisions. In this role, you will:

• Train and deploy AI/ML predictive models for profiling candidate compounds
• Implement virtual screening workflows for the identification of hit chemical structures
• Develop and apply algorithms for model-driven, multi-objective molecular design
• Collaborate within interdisciplinary drug discovery teams to advance pharmaceutical projects
• Contribute to the design of AI/data science methods to expedite the Design-Make-Test-Analyze discovery cycle

The Team You’ll Join

You will be an essential member of the Recursion Digital Chemistry team. The Digital Chemistry Team is an empowered, execution-minded group of drug discovery professionals responsible for translating Recursion's innovative science to patients through hit identification and lead optimization activities. Our desire to make a difference and contribute to our mission of radically improving lives drives everything we do. In your role, you will collaborate cross-functionally within the Chemistry, Biology and Data Science teams to ensure successful planning and execution of discovery operations.

The Experience You’ll Need

• Ph.D. in Cheminformatics, Computational Chemistry, Data Science, Computer Science or related field 
• Extensive relevant drug hunting experience (3+ years)
• Demonstrated contributions to drug discovery programs
• Hands on experience in cheminformatics data analysis
• Proficiency with the Python data stack (numpy, pandas, scikit-learn, etc).
• Working experience with AI/ML algorithms and common cheminfo toolkits (e.g. RDKit, OEChem, ChemAxon).
• Ability to effectively communicate and collaborate across diverse teams of internal and external stakeholders

The Values That We Hope You Share:

• We Care: We care about our drug candidates, our Recursionauts, their families, each other, our communities, the patients we aim to serve and their loved ones. We also care about our work.
• We Learn: Learning from the diverse perspectives of our fellow Recursionauts, and from failure, is an essential part of how we make progress.
• We Deliver: We are unapologetic that our expectations for delivery are extraordinarily high. There is urgency to our existence: we sprint at maximum engagement, making time and space to recover. 
• Act Boldly with Integrity: No company changes the world or reinvents an industry without being bold. It must be balanced; not by timidity, but by doing the right thing even when no one is looking.
• We are One Recursion: We operate with a 'company first, team second' mentality. Our success comes from working as one interdisciplinary team.

Recursion spends time and energy connecting every aspect of work to these values. They aren’t static, but regularly discussed and questioned because we make decisions rooted in those values in our day-to-day work. You can read more about our values and how we live them every day