Senior Principal Computational Chemist, Drug Discovery

IDEAYA Biosciences; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 196,000 - 242,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/dental/vision coverage

401k

ESPP

Wellness programs

Job summary

IDEAYA Biosciences, a precision oncology company in South San Francisco, seeks a Senior Principal Research Scientist in Computational Chemistry to advance small molecule discovery. You will lead design efforts, partner with medicinal chemists, and apply advanced computational approaches to inform lead optimization and candidate selection.

The role emphasizes independence, deep technical expertise, and collaboration within a multidisciplinary team to translate computational insights into tangible

Qualifications

• PhD in Computational Chemistry or related field required.
• 9+ years in pharma/biotech.
• Strong knowledge of structure-, ligand-, and fragment-based discovery.
• Experience with computational methods informing medicinal chemistry.

Responsibilities

• Lead structure-based drug design meetings with medicinal chemists and provide hands-on design support.
• Contribute to programs from target identification through lead optimization and candidate selection.
• Apply modeling to guide medicinal chemistry design and decision-making.
• Use MD, free energy methods, QM, and cheminformatics to answer design questions.
• Provide clear, actionable compound design recommendations to project teams.
• Mentor scientists in structure-based drug design.
• Evaluate new computational methods and workflows for value.

Skills

Structure-based design

Molecular modeling

Medicinal chemistry

Mentoring

Communication

Education

PhD in Computational Chemistry

Tools

Schrödinger

MOE

OpenEye

Job description

IDEAYA Biosciences, a precision oncology company in South San Francisco, seeks a Senior Principal Research Scientist in Computational Chemistry to advance small molecule discovery. You will lead design efforts, partner with medicinal chemists, and apply advanced computational approaches to inform lead optimization and candidate selection.

The role emphasizes independence, deep technical expertise, and collaboration within a multidisciplinary team to translate computational insights into tangible