Senior Computational Chemist - Synthetic & Data-Driven

Ginkgobioworks; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 115,000 - 165,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity (stock options)

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Ginkgo Bioworks in Boston, MA seeks a Senior Engineer I, Synthetic Chemistry to design and execute multi-step syntheses of novel drug-like molecules, including singleton analogs and small focused sets that cannot be made in plate format.

You will own route selection, execution, purification, and characterization end to end, using CASP, reaction-prediction tools, and automated or high-throughput experimentation to inform planning and prediction workflows.

Qualifications

• PhD in synthetic organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, or closely related field with 3+ years industry/postdoc experience, or MS with 6+ years, or BS with 9+ years.
• Proven ability to design and execute multi-step syntheses (5+ steps) and deliver compounds on schedule.
• Independent route-design judgment under real constraints with a broad toolkit.
• Experience with computer-aided synthesis planning or retrosynthesis tools.
• Fluency with chemical structure data, reaction representations, and building-block catalogs.
• Experience with reaction screening, HTE, or related optimization workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design, select, and execute practical multi-step routes to novel drug-like compounds.
• Own purification and characterization, delivering high-quality compounds on schedule.
• Use CASP, retrosynthesis, and reaction-condition tools to guide planning.
• Constrain plans to realistic starting materials and interpret HT/HTE experiments.
• Design for automation and collaborate to define useful tools and go/no-go heuristics.

Skills

CASP fluency

Reaction-prediction tools

Python scripting

Robot-assisted chemistry

Education

PhD in synthetic organic chemistry

MS with 6 years of experience

BS with 9 years of experience

Tools

RDKit

Jupyter

Pandas

Robotic platforms

Job description

Ginkgo Bioworks in Boston, MA seeks a Senior Engineer I, Synthetic Chemistry to design and execute multi-step syntheses of novel drug-like molecules, including singleton analogs and small focused sets that cannot be made in plate format.

You will own route selection, execution, purification, and characterization end to end, using CASP, reaction-prediction tools, and automated or high-throughput experimentation to inform planning and prediction workflows.