Medicinal Chemist

Edison Scientific; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full healthcare coverage

Equity

Parental leave (12+ weeks)

Mental health support

401(k) matching

Lunch and dinner provided

Commuter benefits

Wellness stipend

Team off-sites

Job summary

Edison Scientific is seeking a hands-on Medicinal Chemist to join our Forward Deployed team, embedded with pharmaceutical and biotech partners. You will ensure AI-generated chemistry is credible, synthesizable, and useful to real discovery teams, translating chemistry thinking into agent behavior.

You will build benchmarks, evaluate outputs, and partner with medicinal chemists to integrate AI workflows across hit-to-lead programs.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, or related field with 5+ years in industry.
• Track record in lead optimization campaigns from hit identification to candidate nomination.
• Deep knowledge of cheminformatics tools and data-informed design decisions.

Responsibilities

• Improve AI agent performance for hit-to-lead chemistry tasks including SAR analysis and design.
• Design benchmarks and acceptance criteria for chemistry-focused agent workflows.
• Partner with medicinal chemists to integrate AI agents into discovery workflows.
• Serve as the chemistry expert on AI outputs, assessing structure and actionable insights.
• Collaborate daily with Forward Deployed Engineers and Computational Biologists.
• Support engagement scoping, success metrics, and technical evaluations with GTM teams.

Skills

Lead optimization

SAR analysis

Structure-based design

Synthetic feasibility analysis

Chemoinformatics collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

PhD in Computational Chemistry

Tools

RDKit

Schrödinger

MOE

ADMET

DMPK data integration

Job description

About us

Edison Scientific builds and deploys AI scientist agents to accelerate science and the development of new medicines. We are an ambitious team run by scientists and engineers from leading institutions across biology, physics, chemistry, and AI.

Role

We’re looking for a Medicinal Chemist to join our Forward Deployed team, embedded directly with pharma and biotech partners alongside our engineers and computational biologists. Your job: make sure our AI agents produce chemistry that’s credible, synthesizable, and useful to real drug discovery teams.

You’ll build benchmarks, evaluate agent outputs, and work with our medicinal chemist partners, to find where AI creates the most value in their design, synthesis, testing, and analysis cycles.

This is onsite, hands on work. You’ll build relationships with discovery leaders, translate their chemistry thinking into agent behavior, and feed insights back to our AI team to improve how our platform reasons about molecular design.

Responsibilities

• Improve AI agent performance to hit-to-lead chemistry tasks including SAR analysis, structure-based design, and synthetic feasibility analysis

• Design benchmarks and acceptance criteria for chemistry focused agent workflows

• Partner with medicinal chemists at client organizations to integrate AI agents into their discovery workflows

• Serve as the chemistry expert on AI generated outputs, assessing structural soundness, flagging failure modes, and determining what’s actionable

• Collaborate daily with Forward Deployed Engineers and Computational Biologists on each account

• Support engagement scoping, success metrics, and technical evaluation with our go-to-market team members.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, or a related field and 5+ years of industry experience, ideally within a pharma or biotech sponsor organization

• Track record in lead optimization campaigns from hit identification through candidate nomination

• Deep knowledge of cheminformatics tools such as RDKit, Schrödinger, or MOE

• Experience integrating ADMET and DMPK data into design decisions

• Ability to travel domestically 20-40% of the time

Nice to Have

• Proficiency in Python

• Experience working across multiple therapeutic areas

• High comfort with ambiguity and fast iteration

Why join us?

We’re a fast-moving, mission-driven culture where smart people do their best work and actually enjoy doing it. We also offer full-time employees the following:

• Competitive salary and equity

• Full healthcare coverage; we pay 100% of premiums for you and your dependents

• Support for growing families, including a yearly new parent stipend and fertility coverage through Carrot

• Mental health support through Rula, our in-network therapist and psychiatrist network with fast availability

• 12 weeks of paid parental leave for maternity, paternity, and adoption

• Pet care support with a yearly employer-funded stipend for your animal companions

• Commuter benefits so you can pay for transit and parking with pre-tax dollars

• 401(k) company matching

• $300 health and wellness benefit quarterly

• Lunch is on us every day you’re in the office, and dinner is on us when you’re working late

• Regular team off-sites and company events

Edison Scientific is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.