Medicinal Drug Design Lead, London, Lausanne

Isomorphic Labs; London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a pioneering firm at the forefront of drug discovery, leveraging advanced AI technologies to revolutionize healthcare. As a Medicinal Drug Design Lead, you will play an instrumental role in delivering innovative solutions and driving scientific excellence. Collaborate with a talented team of chemists and AI experts, contributing to groundbreaking projects that aim to cure devastating diseases. This is an opportunity to elevate your career in a supportive and inspiring environment, where your expertise will make a real impact on the future of medicine.

Qualifications

• PhD in Chemistry or related field with 5+ years of industry experience.
• Experience in drug discovery from HitID to Candidate delivery.

Responsibilities

• Lead drug design programs and provide strategic direction.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to solve complex problems.

Skills

Medicinal Chemistry

Synthetic Organic Chemistry

Drug Design

Project Management

Collaboration

Data Analysis

Education

PhD in Chemistry

Equivalent Experience

Job description

Medicinal Drug Design Lead, London, Lausanne

London, Lausanne

Medicinal Drug Design Lead, London or Lausanne

We are here to advance human health, by re-imagining drug discovery with the power and pace of artificial intelligence.

The future is coming. A future enabled and enriched by the incredible power of machine learning. A future in which diseases are curtailed or cured by better and faster drug discovery.

Our values exist in service of that future. We think they’ll help us bring it closer, too.

Come and be part of an interdisciplinary team driving groundbreaking innovation and play a meaningful role in contributing towards us achieving our ambitious goals, while being a part of an inspiring and collaborative culture.

The world we want tomorrow is the one we’re building today. It starts with the culture at this company. It starts with you. If this ticks you

About Iso

Isomorphic Labs (IsoLabs) was founded in 2021 and is led by Sir Demis Hassabis. Our aim is to usher in a new era of biomedical breakthroughs and find cures for some of humanity’s devastating diseases.

Our foundations are built on the success of Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold, but we didn’t stop there! We are continuing to develop and implement state-of-the-art technologies as we move towards our goal of dramatically accelerating and improving the process of designing and bringing new medicines to patients.

We have built a world-leading drug design engine comprising foundational AI models that are capable of working across multiple therapeutic areas and drug modalities. The company is continually innovating on model architecture and developing cutting-edge capabilities to advance rational drug design.

About the Medicinal Drug Design Team

We are a growing team of medicinal chemists who sit within the Drug Design and Medical Research function at Isomorphic Labs. Our primary focus is to lead the chemistry on our internal portfolio and collaboration projects, but we also use our domain knowledge to work collaboratively with our AI/ML colleagues to build the Platform and drive forward success and innovation in drug design. We work closely together in a supportive environment, where everyone is valued for the expertise and experience they bring to the group. We have a strong growth mindset and ensure we prioritise continued development and learning as medicinal chemists.

Your impact

As part of the ongoing expansion of our Drug Design and Medical Research function, we are looking to recruit a number of Medicinal Chemistry positions in our Medicinal Drug Design Team.

Working as part of the Medicinal Drug Design Team, you will work as a chemistry lead to deliver scientific expertise and strategic direction to fulfil milestone objectives on our portfolio projects. You will be supporting the business alongside world leading AI/ML Drug Design Platform teams, and will work collaboratively to drive both improvements in the Platform and apply this to real drug design projects.

Ready to elevate your scientific career? Isomorphic Labs offers ambitious scientists a unique environment to tackle stimulating challenges, pushing your boundaries and accelerating your personal and professional growth.

Please note that this is a scientific leadership role, where we will need you to take an active hands-on role as an individual contributor rather than being a people manager.

What you will do

• Apply your knowledge and track record of modern drug design / discovery principles and synthetic organic chemistry to execute Drug Design programs and to provide strategic input and technical direction to our Platform teams.
• Collaborate both internally and with third party organisations, interacting within multidisciplinary teams, to support data-driven delivery of high quality scientific solutions to complex technical problems.
• Represent the company externally, interacting with existing and prospective collaborators and Contract Research Organisations (CROs).
• Manage CRO resource and other members of the growing team, mentoring and supporting their development.
• Prepare detailed scientific proposals and reports to support new and ongoing programs.
• Embrace and champion our culture of inclusion and continuous professional development.

Skills and qualifications

• PhD in Chemistry or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
• Good foundation in medicinal chemistry with a minimum of 5+ years previous industrial experience operating as an individual contributor within a pharma/biotech/CRO setting.
• Experience in execution of drug discovery programs from HitID to Candidate delivery with a consistent track record, working in multidisciplinary teams.
• Experience in a lead chemist role.
• Experience and expertise working on Lead Optimisation programs, with familiarity of optimisation of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK).
• Experience of working with and closely managing CRO resource.
• Track record of authorship of relevant scientific manuscripts and inventorship of composition of matter patents.

Nice to have:

• Direct experience of working in a Pharma, Biotech or CRO on drug discovery collaborations, ideally in a chemistry or project lead role.
• Experience of contributing to Structure-Based Drug Design problems.
• Experience of successful application of fragment-based drug design approaches.

Excited about this opportunity? We encourage you to apply by Friday, May 23rd, 2025.

Culture and values

We are guided by our shared values. It's not about finding people who think and act in the same way. These values help to guide our work and will continue to strengthen it.

Thoughtful
Thoughtful at Iso is about curiosity, creativity and care. It is about good people doing good, rigorous and future-making science every single day.

Brave
Brave at Iso is about fearlessness, but it’s also about initiative and integrity. The scale of the challenge demands nothing less.

Determined
Determined at Iso is the way we pursue our goal. It’s a confidence in our hypothesis, as well as the urgency and agility needed to deliver on it. Because disease won’t wait, so neither should we.

Together
Together at Iso is about connection, collaboration across fields and catalytic relationships. It’s knowing that transformation is a group project, and remembering that what we’re doing will have a real impact on real people everywhere.

Creating an extraordinary company

We believe that to be successful we need a team with a range of skills and talents. We're building an environment where collaboration is fundamental, learning is shared and every employee feels supported and able to thrive. We value unique experiences, knowledge, backgrounds, and perspectives, and harness these qualities to create extraordinary impact.

We are committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding) or any other basis protected by applicable law. If you have a disability or additional need that requires accommodation, please do not hesitate to let us know.

It’s hugely important for us to share knowledge and build strong relationships with each other, and we find it easier to do this if we spend time together in person. This is why we follow a hybrid model, and would require you to be able to come into the office 3 days a week (currently Tuesday, Wednesday, and one other day depending on which team you’re in). If you have additional needs that would prevent you from following this hybrid approach, we’d be happy to talk through these if you’re selected for an initial screening call.

Please note that when you submit an application, your data will be processed in line with our privacy policy .

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We value diversity of experience, knowledge, backgrounds and perspectives and harness these qualities to create extraordinary impact. We are working to build teams that reflect and represent the populations we are striving to serve. As part of this effort we would like to better understand our candidate audience, so that we can continue to improve.

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