Executive Director, Toxicology

Recursion; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 134,000 - 173,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading TechBio company in London is seeking a Head of Toxicology to oversee drug safety strategies and lead a skilled team. The role requires a Ph.D. and experience in drug discovery and development. The ideal candidate will ensure cutting-edge safety practices while collaborating closely with various teams. The position offers competitive compensation ranging from £134,200 to £172,100 and includes additional bonuses and equity options.

Benefits

Annual bonus

Equity compensation

Comprehensive benefits package

Qualifications

• Strong working knowledge of preclinical drug discovery models.
• Experience with supporting programs from preclinical to clinical development.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex variables and uncertainty.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Toxicology function and collaborate with various teams.
• Guide internal strategy for safe drug development.
• Support Discovery teams in exploratory safety studies.

Skills

Leadership

Data synthesis

Communication

Attention to detail

Education

Ph.D.

ERT or DABT accreditation

Job description

Your work will change lives. Including your own.

The Impact You'll Make

As the Head of Toxicology, you will sit at the crucial intersection of Discovery and Development, supporting both our internal pipeline and strategic partnerships. You will lead a team responsible for embedding modern, data-driven decision-making into our NCE progression, ultimately accelerating our mission to decode biology to radically improve lives.

As a forward-looking leader, you will be instrumental in positioning Recursion at the forefront of the industry's shift away from reliance on traditional pre-clinical studies. You will champion the adoption and validation of highly predictive human models, as this is central to our TechBio approach of industrializing drug discovery.

In this role, you will:

• Guide internal strategy and external collaborations to ensure Recursion's toxicology and safety science remains state-of-the-art, driven by the mantra to "predict more, test less."
• Provide pivotal support to Discovery teams, expertly guiding them through exploratory small molecule safety studies toward Development Candidate (DC) nomination.
• Support Development teams in successfully navigating regulatory (GLP / IND-enabling) small molecule studies through First-in-Human (FIH) trials and beyond.
• Partner with data science, AI, and machine learning experts to design, deploy, and leverage the state-of-the-art computational and predictive tools that generate robust, clinically-relevant translational datasets within the Recursion OS.

The Team You Will Join

You will lead the Toxicology function and operate in a highly cross‑functional manner, collaborating closely with leaders across Discovery, Clinical Development, Translational Biology, and our core AI/ML and Data Science organizations across our various locations.

The Experience You’ll Need

• Ph.D. is strongly preferred together with accreditation such as ERT or DABT.
• As an experienced leader, you will have worked at / with a mixture of company types (CRO, large pharma, and biotech).
• You are an integrator of information, skilled at synthesizing complex data to provide Project Teams, Partners, and Management with data-driven recommendations and risk assessments as projects advance through the portfolio.
• Demonstrated ability to lead interdisciplinary, cross‑functional teams in a complex organization. Must be able to manage and prioritize multiple projects to ensure they are high-quality, on time, and on budget.
• Proven track record of supporting programs from preclinical discovery into clinical development, specifically supporting research for small molecule drugs.
• Strong working knowledge of preclinical drug discovery models and the ability to synthesize scientific content and strategy for senior management. Must be able to manage complex variables and uncertainty to align drug development with preclinical research.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and high-level negotiation skills. Ability to resolve conflict and effectively interact with diverse stakeholders, including discovery, clinical, regulatory, and operations teams.
• Exceptional attention to detail, with strong planning, time management, and organizational skills.

Working Location & Compensation

This is an office-based, hybrid position at one of our offices located in Salt Lake City, Utah / London / New York City. Employees are expected to work in the office at least 50% of the time.

At Recursion, we believe that every employee should be compensated fairly. Based on the skill and level of experience required for this role, the estimated current annual base range for this role is £134,200 to £172,100 (GBP). You will also be eligible for an annual bonus and equity compensation, as well as a comprehensive benefits package.

The Values We Hope You Share

• We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust.
• We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.
• We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.
• We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.
• We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy—leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together.
• We are One Recursion. True cross‑functional collaboration is about trust, clarity, humility, and impact. Through sharing, we can be greater than the sum of our individual capabilities.

More About Recursion

Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) is a clinical stage TechBio company leading the space by decoding biology to radically improve lives. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, a platform built across diverse technologies that continuously generate one of the world’s largest proprietary biological and chemical datasets. Recursion leverages sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to distill from its dataset a collection of trillions of searchable relationships across biology and chemistry unconstrained by human bias. 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.

Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City, where it is a founding member of BioHive, the Utah life sciences industry collective. Recursion also has offices in Toronto, Montréal, New York, London, Oxford area, and the San Francisco Bay area. Learn more at www.Recursion.com, or connect on LinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer. 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.

Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.