Principal Scientist

Scorpion Therapeutics; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Bristol Myers Squibb seeks a Principal Scientist to lead antibody engineering initiatives within its Therapeutic Discovery Sciences Department, focusing on early-stage research and platform technology development for recombinant antibody therapeutics. This laboratory-based role is based in San Diego, CA.

You will design, execute, and troubleshoot affinity maturation and humanization efforts, collaborate across discovery, structural, and computational biology teams, and evaluate emerging AI/ML

Qualifications

• PhD in protein science, structural biology, biochemistry, or related field.
• 4+ years of industry or academic experience in antibody research.
• Hands-on expertise in antibody design, expression, purification, and characterization.
• Experience with SPR/BLI assays for protein interactions.
• Proven independent project planning and troubleshooting.

Responsibilities

• Design, execute, and troubleshoot affinity maturation workflows.
• Lead humanization, format conversion, and characterization of antibody formats.
• Collaborate across discovery, structural biology, computational biology teams.
• Evaluate emerging technologies including AI/ML.
• Author technical documentation and lead scientific discussions.

Skills

Antibody design

Expression & purification

SPR/BLI assays

Experiment planning

Scientific leadership

Education

PhD in protein science/structural biology/biochemistry

Tools

SPR

BLI

Job description

Role:

Principal Scientist leading antibody engineering initiatives within Bristol Myers Squibb's Therapeutic Discovery Sciences Department, focusing on early-stage research and platform technology development for recombinant antibody therapeutics.

Responsibilities:

• design, execute, and troubleshoot workflows for affinity maturation, humanization, format conversion, and characterization of diverse antibody formats (IgG, Fab, scFv, bispecifics)
• analyze biophysical properties using SEC, SPR/BLI
• collaborate across discovery, structural biology, computational biology, and other teams
• evaluate emerging technologies including AI/ML
• author technical documentation and lead scientific discussions.

Requirements:

• PhD in protein science, structural biology, biochemistry, or related field
• 4+ years of relevant industry or academic experience
• hands-on expertise in antibody design, expression, purification, and characterization
• experience with protein interaction assays like SPR/BLI
• proven independent experiment planning and troubleshooting skills
• scientific leadership with impactful publications or patents.

Preferred:

• experience with advanced antibody formats, bioinformatics, structural techniques, and therapeutic areas such as oncology or immunology
• prior biotech or pharma experience.

HighValue:

• biologics
• antibody engineering
• early discovery
• biophysical characterization
• platform development
• cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Work setup:

laboratory-based role in San Diego, CA.