Director, Digital Chemistry

Recursion is a clinical-stage biotechnology company decoding biology by integrating technological innovations across biology, chemistry, automation, data science and engineering to radically improve the lives of patients and industrialize drug discovery. Our team is working to solve some of the hardest, most meaningful problems facing human health today. Come join us in our mission to decode biology to radically improve lives, while doing the most impactful work of your life.

Recursion has built a unique dataset (over 1 million unique biological perturbations profiled in a high-dimensional biological assay, rather than one-dimensional biochemical assays, making up nearly 8 PB of highly-relatable data) and a unique approach to phenotypic drug discovery using our inference-based Recursion Map to predict tens of billions of relationships between disease models and therapeutic candidates. The Director, Digital Chemistry position offers a unique opportunity to use this data and approach to break new ground in machine learning in chemistry and directly accelerate the path to the clinic for Recursion’s therapeutic candidates.

• Guide Recursion’s strategy for computational chemistry methods to rapidly advance molecules from hits on our phenotypic screening platform through hit-to-lead, lead optimization, and clinical candidate nomination.
• Build and manage a team of data scientists, computational chemists, and machine learning scientists and engineers to develop methods, advance active molecular candidate programs, and advance the state of the art in drug discovery.
• Innovate machine learning methods with a team of data scientists, machine learning scientists, and computational chemists to leverage Recursion’s uniquely broad and deep multi-petabyte biological dataset to crack open problems in chemistry.
• Collaborate with other leaders in data science, chemistry, biology, and product to integrate chemical machine learning into Recursion’s development roadmap.
• Deliver excellence in both strategy and application of computational chemistry to accelerate Recursion’s pipeline.

As Director, Digital Chemistry, you will report to the VP, Data Science and lead our digital chemistry division: a team of data scientists, computational chemists, and machine learning scientists and engineers working to accelerate Recursion’s new chemical entity drug discovery efforts from screening hit to clinical candidate nomination. In your role, you will define Recursion’s roadmap for computational methods in chemistry in collaboration with leaders in Chemistry and Product to develop and onboard ligand-based drug design capabilities, and you will build and manage a team of computational scientists executing on this vision leading towards the discovery of high value medicines.

THE EXPERIENCE YOU’LL NEED

• Advanced degree in computer science, statistics, computational chemistry, physical organic chemistry, or relevant fields.
• 2+ years experience and demonstrated success as computational lead on interdisciplinary therapeutic candidate project teams or as technical lead for computational scientists in chemistry.
• Experience hiring and managing rapidly growing, diverse teams of computational scientists.
• 3+ years experience developing and applying ligand-based drug design methods, including traditional (chemoinformatic, biophysical) and statistical/machine learning approaches to library search, SAR/ADMET optimization, and/or synthesis and route prediction.

The Benefits/Perks You’ll Enjoy

• 100% Coverage of health, vision, and dental insurance premiums 
• 401(k) with generous matching (immediate vesting)
• Stock option, restricted stock unit (RSUs) and employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) programs**
• Two one-week paid company closures (summer and winter) 
• Flexible vacation/sick leave
• Generous paid parental leave (including adoptive)
• Onsite daycare facility** (Salt Lake City)
• Commuter benefit and vehicle parking to ease your commute** 
• Complimentary chef-prepared lunches and well-stocked snack bars** (Salt Lake City)
• Monthly fitness/wellness stipend 
• One-of-a-kind 100,000 square foot headquarters complete with a 70-foot climbing wall, showers, lockers, and bike parking** (Salt Lake City)

**United States based employees

More About Us 

Recursion is a clinical-stage biotechnology company decoding biology by integrating technological innovations across biology, chemistry, automation, data science, and engineering, with the goal of radically improving the lives of patients and industrializing drug discovery. Central to our mission is the Recursion Operating System, or Recursion OS, that combines an advanced infrastructure layer to generate what we believe is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing proprietary biological and chemical datasets and the Recursion Map, a suite of custom software, algorithms, and machine learning tools that we use to explore foundational biology unconstrained by human bias and navigate to new biological insights which may accelerate our programs. We are a biotechnology company scaling more like a technology company. Recursion is proudly headquartered in Salt Lake City. 

Learn more at www.recursion.com, or connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values diversity and inclusion.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation.