About the team you’ll join
Aqemia's mission is to discover new drugs in a scalable and reproducible way, using our unique technology that combines novel physics-based and machine learning algorithms to invent the next generation of drugs.
Drug hunters are key to achieving this goal, as they select the molecules we send to synthesis for specific drug discovery projects based on clear and data-driven hypotheses. They follow their projects from A to Z, from the early stages through to the pre-clinical phases.
You will be an integral member of a team working on either internal drug discovery projects or those of one of our external partners. You'll work closely with talented colleagues of diverse backgrounds and expertise including but not limited to machine learning engineers, project managers, medicinal chemists and physicists.
Your role as a Senior Drug Hunter at Aqemia:
- Design and generate small molecules to address a given therapeutic target, starting with affinity and selectivity of validated drug targets
- Based on experimental results, optimize efficacy and safety properties using Aqemia's platform technology
- Present and communicate your findings concisely to internal and/or external stakeholders at all levels of the organization with conclusions based upon robust, data-driven analysis
- Apply and test the baseline technologies and workflows developed by Aqemia's platform, including but not limited to; generative AI algorithms, property prediction models, molecular dynamics techniques and chemoinformatics tools
- Develop chemistry plans with CROs to ensure prioritization of most promising compounds
- Provide systematic feedback to Aqemia's technology platform using a structured methodology based upon experience and project experimental results
- Advocate for new approaches proactively to advance the project and improve Aqemia's technology to make it more accurate, faster and more scalable
- Work hand-in-hand with Aqemia's interdisciplinary team beyond your project team to continuously improve our platform technology
For a senior role, we would also expect the successful candidate to:
- Mentor more junior Drug Hunters to unlock their potential
- Embody the Aqemia Way and promulgate it: our way of working, bring valuable experience and advice to the team
- Be an active, self-motivated participant in multiple drug discovery projects concurrently
- Be perceived internally as a reference for your specific expertise
In your first months, we expect you to:
Your first month:
- Getting to know Aqemia’s processes and pipelines and how they are applied to drug discovery projects
- Become familiar with the tools and provide feedback in a “discovery report”
Within three months:
- Perform independently in your drug discovery projects
- Present project outcomes and milestones to all internal and external stakeholders
Within six months:
- Onboard and mentor new joiners on your Drug Discovery projects
- Contribute your expertise to the development of Aqemia’s internal technology
- Advance your Drug Discovery project(s) to the lead optimization phase
The skills we are looking for:
- You have 3+ years of pharma/biotech/CRO experience with a focus on computational chemistry for small molecule structure-based Drug Discovery
- You have hands-on experience in computational chemistry applied to drug discovery using state-of-the-art structure-based and ligand-based methods
- Ideally, you have a Ph.D. and/or postdoctoral experience and a track record of technical excellence as demonstrated by peer-reviewed publications
Technical skills
- You are an object-oriented programmer with an awareness of coding best practices that ensure robustness and scalability such as Git, CI/CD pipelines.
- You are comfortable with object-oriented programming in Linux/UNIX environments.
- Python programming experience is mandatory
- Knowledge of standard computational chemistry packages (RDKIT, OpenMM, parmed, Ambertools, MDAnalysis...) is mandatory
- You have extensive knowledge of protein structures, functions, and protein-ligand interactions
- You also have experience in small molecule ligand discovery and cheminformatics techniques:
- Protein homology modeling
- Small molecule docking and pharmacophore hypothesis generation
- Virtual (in silico) screening
- Structure-activity relationship (SAR) analysis
- QSAR and ADMET property modeling
- Multi-property optimization-based compound design
- Database searches
- Combinatorial library design
- Free energy based affinity prediction
- Molecular dynamics simulations
- Broad knowledge of medicinal chemistry principles, key properties to optimize (e.g. solubility, metabolism, synthesizability) and their relation to standard computational methods
- Analyze diverse chemical data and identify trends using statistical methodologies to ensure a reproducible and data-driven process
Preferred mindset
- You are eager to play an effective role in Aqemia's strategy to develop drugs for patients.
- You are eager to use your wealth of knowledge and skills to inspire and coach brilliant people from diverse backgrounds.
- You are eager to solve tough problems on issues that really matter, with a proactive and can-do attitude.
- You thrive on working collectively in a fast-paced, interdisciplinary environment that keeps everyone on track.
Our recruitment process:
1 - Hiring manager interview: you'll meet your future manager (1h, visio call)
2 - Technical assessment of your skills: questions on molecular modeling, medicinal chemistry, molecular docking and cheminformatics, with an expert from the team (1h, visio call)
3 - Culture-fit interview with our co-founder and COO Emmanuelle (45min, visio call)
4 - Final interview with our co-founder and CEO Maximilien (45min, visio call)
