Director, Peptide AI‑Driven Drug Design

Mix Talent; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity participation

Comprehensive benefits

Professional development opportunities

Competitive salary

Job summary

Mix Talent seeks a Peptide Computational Chemist to advance discovery of oral macrocyclic peptides and antibody engineering programs. You will use AI-enabled design, molecular modeling, and cheminformatics in a collaborative environment with chemists, structural biologists, and ML experts.

The role shapes computational strategy at an early-stage biotech, offering a platform for scientific creativity and pipeline impact through state-of-the-art design and data-driven decision making.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry, Chemistry, Biophysics, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemical Biology, or related discipline.
• 2–8+ years of industry or postdoctoral experience in computational drug discovery.
• Strong expertise in molecular modeling, docking, molecular dynamics, and structure-based drug design.
• Experience with Schrödinger, MOE, OpenEye, Rosetta, Amber, GROMACS, or comparable software packages.
• Programming proficiency in Python and experience with scientific computing libraries.
• Experience interpreting structural biology data.
• Strong communication skills and ability to work within multidisciplinary teams.

Responsibilities

• Drive computational design and optimization of macrocyclic peptide therapeutics using molecular modeling and structure-based drug design.
• Develop predictive computational workflows for potency, selectivity, permeability, oral bioavailability, and physicochemical properties.
• Apply molecular docking, molecular dynamics, free energy calculations, and quantum mechanical methods to support lead optimization.
• Partner with peptide chemists to prioritize compounds for synthesis and guide SAR campaigns.
• Analyze and interpret X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM, NMR, or other structural data.
• Utilize cheminformatics and machine learning approaches to analyze screening data and identify novel design opportunities.
• Build and maintain computational pipelines integrating public and proprietary datasets.
• Communicate computational insights to cross-functional project teams and company leadership.
• Stay current with advances in computational chemistry, AI for drug discovery, peptide design, and protein engineering.

Skills

Molecular modeling

Docking

Molecular dynamics

Python programming

Structure-based drug design

SAR analysis

Cross-disciplinary teamwork

Education

Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry or related field

Tools

Schrödinger

MOE

OpenEye

Rosetta

Amber

GROMACS

Job description

Mix Talent seeks a Peptide Computational Chemist to advance discovery of oral macrocyclic peptides and antibody engineering programs. You will use AI-enabled design, molecular modeling, and cheminformatics in a collaborative environment with chemists, structural biologists, and ML experts.

The role shapes computational strategy at an early-stage biotech, offering a platform for scientific creativity and pipeline impact through state-of-the-art design and data-driven decision making.