Scientific Software Engineer

Nxera Pharma; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

26 days annual leave

Private Medical Insurance for employee

Pension contribution

Dental and optical reimbursement

Gym membership subsidy

Discretionary cash bonuses

Job summary

Nxera Pharma in Cambridge is seeking a Data & Cheminformatics engineer to collaborate with R&D, understand workflows, identify gaps, and design solutions that reduce friction and cycle times.

You will build web-based tools, automate workflows for chemical and biological data, enable data curation, and support decision making. This role combines software with biotech data assets and requires strong communication with stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Degree in computer science, chemistry or biology.
• Experience as full-stack software engineer in a production environment.
• Knowledge of relational databases, data modelling and SQL.
• Experience with software engineering best-practices including version control, CI/CD, testing.
• Experience working with stakeholders across disciplines in life-science settings.

Responsibilities

• Develop web-based tools to handle and track requests/submissions and streamline lab operations.
• Automate workflows to store, transform and visualise chemical, pharmacological, structural, biophysical and ADMET data for project decisions.
• Provide tools to enable curation and annotation of experimental data by lab scientists.
• Automate manual/semi-manual processes to speed up day-to-day tasks for experimentalists and data managers.
• Maintain and develop scientific software and database systems to maximise data value.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

SQL & data modelling

CI/CD

Stakeholder engagement

Biotech domain knowledge

AI/ML tooling familiarity

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Bioinformatics/Chemistry

Tools

RDKit

Prefect

Pipeline Pilot

Knime

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Reports to: VP of Cheminformatics & Data Architecture

About Nxera Pharma

Nxera Pharma (formerly Sosei Heptares) is a technology powered biopharma company, in pursuit of new speciality medicines to improve the lives of patients with unmet needs globally.

In addition to several products being commercialized in Japan, we are advancing an extensive pipeline of active programs from discovery through to late clinical stage internally and in partnership with leading pharma and biotech companies. This pipeline is focused on addressing major unmet needs in some of the fastest-growing areas of medicine (particularly metabolic and endocrine disorders), and leverages the power of our unique and industry leading GPCR-targeted structure-based drug discovery "NxWave" platform to provide a sustainable source of best- or first-in-class candidates.

In Cambridge UK, we have built outstanding research capabilities across our platform, discovery and translational medicine teams, to advance multiple programs from pre-clinical through to early clinical development.

In Tokyo, our expert teams are dedicated to late-stage development (Ph 2/3) and innovative commercialization/ go-to-market approaches.

Our newly formed NxAQ organisation is building a high throughput AI and physics driven GPCR discovery engine that augments our world class experimental capabilities and extensive proprietary structural and chemogenomic data assets, with the aim of developing drug candidates faster.

The Role

You will join the Data & Cheminformatics team within NxAQ. The successful candidate will work with stakeholders across the Nxera Pharma R&D business to understand their day-to-day workflows, identify gaps and limitations, and design innovative solutions that reduce friction, costs and cycle times.

What You'll Do

• Develop web-based tools to handle and track requests/submissions and streamline lab operations.
• Implement and automate workflows to store, transform and visualise chemical, pharmacological, structural, biophysical and ADMET data to support project decision making.
• Provide tools to enable curation and annotation of experimental data by lab scientists.
• Automate manual/semi-manual processes across the business to speed up the day-to-day tasks of both experimentalists and data managers within the team.
• Contribute to the maintenance and development of our scientific software and database systems to ensure maximum value can be extracted from our data assets.

What You'll Bring

• A degree in computer science, chemical or biological sciences.
• Full-stack software engineering experience in a production environment.
• Knowledge of relational database systems, data modelling and SQL.
• Experience following software engineering best-practices including version control, containerisation, CI/CD, code-review and testing.
• Experience working directly with stakeholders across different disciplines to determine requirements (ideally in a life-science setting).
• Strong communication, presentation and collaboration skills.
• Software development experience in the biotech/pharmaceutical sector.
• Prior experience working with experimental drug discovery data (e.g., structural, assay, synthesis information) and data-management/ELN systems.
• Experience using automation/workflow tools such as Prefect, Pipeline Pilot, Knime.
• Knowledge of chemical file formats and chemistry toolkits (e.g., RDKit)
• Hands-on experience using AI coding-assistants or agentic tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Codex).

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
• 26 days annual leave in addition to public holidays plus the option to purchase an additional 5 days each year
• Employer contribution to pension
• Private Medical Insurance for employees and family 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

At Nxera Pharma, we are passionate about delivering life-changing medicines to patients. We foster an open and welcoming environment where everyone can bring their authentic self to work, harnessing our individual strengths to succeed together.

We value our culture rooted in a diverse mix of minds, backgrounds, and abilities, with a deep sense of belonging. For us, inclusiveness is a reflex, not an initiative.

We are achieving this through a consistent commitment to fairness, equal opportunity, and equity.