Senior Principal Scientist, Agentic AI for Drug Discovery

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 168,000 - 252,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision benefits

Paid time off

Educational assistance programs

Commuting subsidy

Matching charitable donations

401(k)

Job summary

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated seeks a Senior Principal Scientist to lead the development and deployment of agentic AI systems for drug discovery. The role spans small molecules and proteins, driving AI-enabled scientific workflows with collaboration across computational sciences, software engineering, and Digital Technology & Engineering.

This Boston-based, hybrid position requires onsite work three days per week. A Ph.D.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry, Cheminformatics, or a related scientific discipline.
• 8+ years of experience in scientific software development and application to drug discovery programs.
• Hands-on experience developing, deploying, and managing AI-enabled scientific products or platforms.
• Proven ability to translate scientific opportunities into scalable computational or AI capabilities with measurable impact.
• Experience working across discovery research, computational sciences, data science, and engineering.

Responsibilities

• Translate scientific requirements into agentic AI solutions for autonomous reasoning and planning.
• Build, test, and deploy AI-enabled solutions supporting drug discovery across modalities.
• Collaborate with computational scientists, software engineers, and cross-functional teams.
• Apply software engineering, DevOps, and compliance best practices for production-grade AI systems.
• Design testing, evaluation, and validation strategies for agentic AI systems.
• Contribute to innovation efforts to leverage agentic and generative AI in research programs.
• Stay current with emerging agentic AI patterns and prototype new capabilities.

Skills

Agentic AI

Python programming

Machine learning

CI/CD

DevOps practices

Scientific software development

Stakeholder management

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry or Cheminformatics

8+ years in scientific software development

Experience with AI-enabled scientific products

Tools

Cheminformatics tools

Drug discovery platforms

Job description

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated seeks a Senior Principal Scientist to lead the development and deployment of agentic AI systems for drug discovery. The role spans small molecules and proteins, driving AI-enabled scientific workflows with collaboration across computational sciences, software engineering, and Digital Technology & Engineering.

This Boston-based, hybrid position requires onsite work three days per week. A Ph.D.