Computational Chemist

Sosei Heptares is an international biopharmaceutical company with a mission to make a significant contribution to improving the quality of life and health of people around the world. To achieve this, we will discover, design, and develop the most innovative and effective medicines for patients worldwide, through our world-leading patent-protected technology and platform.

Our core focus is on the discovery and early development of new medicines originating from our proprietary G Protein-Coupled Receptor (GPCR) targeted StaR® technology and Structure Based Drug Design (SBDD) platform capabilities. Today, we are advancing a broad and deep pipeline of novel medicines across multiple therapeutic areas, including neurology, immunology, gastroenterology, and inflammation diseases.

We have established partnerships with some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies and multiple emerging technology companies, including AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Biohaven, Genentech (Roche), GSK, Neurocrine Biosciences, Novartis, Pfizer, Takeda and Verily.

Sosei Heptares is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan with corporate and R&D facilities in London and Cambridge, UK. We have approximately 170 employees based at our state-of-the-art R&D research centre at Granta Park, Cambridge. The size of our company ensures optimum agility and transparent linkage between all activities from early discovery through to clinical development.

For more information, please visit https://soseiheptares.com/. LinkedIn: @soseiheptaresco | Twitter: @soseiheptaresco | YouTube: @soseiheptaresco

Position:

We are growing our Computer-Aided Drug Design and Cheminformatics/AI capabilities, by extending our Computational Chemistry team, with an addition of a Computational Chemist.

This is an exciting and exceptional opportunity to participate in cutting-edge science using unique structural data whilst making significant contributions to the industry-leading drug discovery R&D. The Computational Chemistry team uses state-of-the-art CADD techniques to support and drive discovery projects from early exploratory stage to clinical candidate stage working closely with chemistry, pharmacology, biophysics and structural biology teams. The team is actively involved in Sosei Heptares internal and partnered drug discovery projects, and AI and SBDD collaborations, providing significant opportunities for scientific and leadership growth to contribute to advancing and leading drug discovery projects within multi-disciplinary teams.

Please apply if you feel passionate about joining our team where scientific excellence and passion combine in a friendly fun environment to impact drug discovery projects and create new cutting-edge approaches.

Responsibilities

As member of the Computational Chemistry team, you:

• Contribute to multidisciplinary GPCR SBDD projects by applying a broad set of computational chemistry and cheminformatics approaches to support and creatively contribute to data-driven molecular design and medicinal chemistry efforts.

• Develop and apply customised computational chemistry and cheminformatics tools, workflows and models to extract, integrate, analyse and visualise complex chemical, structural, pharmacological and ADMET data within the context of structure-based drug discovery.

• Play an active role in new initiatives, such as:

• Structural GPCRome and chemogenomics guided virtual ligand screening

• GPCR SBDD optimized alchemical relative binding free energy approaches

• Development of new computational chemistry CADD software via external collaborations

• Generative models for GPCR structure-based artificially intelligent molecular design

• Structural bioinformatics and StaR® data driven GPCR protein engineering

• Structure-based optimization of GPCR StaR® enabled DNA-Encoded Library screening hits

Requirements:

Requirements

• Ph.D. or equivalent experience in computational chemistry, cheminformatics, or a related discipline

• Strong background in molecular recognition and the structural and physicochemical property determinants of small molecule binding to proteins

• Computational chemistry experience within a collaborative multi-disciplinary medicinal chemistry research environment

• Working knowledge and hands-on experience with molecular modelling, computer-aided drug design and cheminformatics software packages

• Experience in using CADD approaches to investigate structural protein-ligand interactions, including phamacophore modeling and molecular docking

• Experience using cheminformatics toolkits or computational chemistry tools to solve problems such as similarity searching, matched pair analysis, clustering, QSAR modelling, visualisation of structure-activity relationships and virtual library enumeration.

• Strong coding skills in Python and familiarity with common data science packages

• Advanced analytical and critical problem-solving skills, combined with scientific creativity and a proactive, positive can-do attitude

• Strong team player with an inclusive, pro-active and positive can-do mindset that is willing to listen and learn from others.

• Excellent interpersonal, oral and written communication skills: you will need to be able to communicate effectively with team members having diverse professional backgrounds.

Expertise and willingness to drive and implement improved processes in at least two of the following areas:

• 
  Structure-based GPCR ligand design, including structural modeling of GPCR-ligand complexes

• Development of tools (workflows, webapps or equivalent) for use by medicinal chemists for interpretation of project data or to guide idea generation

• Computational structural chemogenomics approaches for virtual ligand screening

• AI/ML approaches such as Deep Generative Models for molecular design.

Other information:

What’s in it for you?

• State-of-the-art R&D centre located in the heart of the Cambridge science cluster

• Competitive compensation package including discretionary cash bonuses

• Eligible for grants of Restricted Stock Units in Sosei Group Corporation

• 25 days annual leave in addition to public holidays

• Employer contribution to pension

• Private Medical Insurance and a cash plan for dental and optical reimbursement

• Health and wellbeing benefits including a subsidised individual gym membership

• Income protection to cover long term absences due to ill health

• Group Death in Service equal to 4x basic annual salary

Why Sosei Heptares?

At Sosei Heptares, we are dedicated to the pursuit of scientific innovation. Our mission is to make a significant contribution to improving the quality of life and health of people around the world. To achieve this, we will discover, design, and develop the most innovative and effective medicines for patients worldwide, through our world-leading patent-protected technology and platform

Working at Sosei Heptares

The Sosei Heptares R&D centre is a modern, state-of-the-art centre located within easy shuttle reach of Cambridge and Whittlesford Parkway train stations. We offer a collaborative, diverse and inclusive working environment that considers your individual needs and believes in maintaining a sustainable work-life balance. You will be welcomed by a team of colleagues with decades of accumulated experience in their areas of expertise, happy to help you develop your own skills in a highly collaborative environment and who are keen to provide guidance and support in your personal and career development plans.

Our Vision and Values

To become one of Japan’s science and technology-led biopharmaceutical drug discovery champions. To achieve this, we will leverage our global know-how and operating agility to deliver a sustainable pipeline of first or best-in-class therapeutics, ensuring our place amongst the next generation of leading innovators.

We are guided by three fundamental values.

• Limitless Compassion

• Unswerving passion

• Continuous self-innovation

These unchanging set of core values that serves as a guide across all our activities

Join Us!

Other information

The successful candidate will be employed by Heptares Therapeutics Ltd, a UK wholly owned subsidiary of Sosei Group Corporation.

Sosei Heptares is committed to building a diverse and ambitious workforce, and to promoting equal opportunities in employment. We recognize that diverse and inclusive teams build a stronger and more innovative company. Therefore, all qualified applicants will be considered for employment: we do not discriminate based on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, or any other classification prescribed by law.

Applications should include a CV and covering letter, providing a short description of your background and interest in the role. Please apply through our on-line job’s portal with your application in pdf format, quoting reference number 2023-CompChem-SS1. The closing date for applications is 19 June 2023.

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