Remote Senior Computational Biologist - Drug Discovery & ML

Placements24; Klerksdorp; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 2,100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully remote role

Competitive salary

Performance bonuses

Stock options

Health insurance

Paid time off

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Senior Computational Biologist for a fully remote role, applying bioinformatics, cheminformatics, and machine learning to accelerate drug discovery and analyze large-scale data.

You will collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, mentor junior researchers, and stay current with advances in computational biology in a remote-first environment demanding strong communication and self-management.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Cheminformatics, Computer Science, or related life sciences field.
• 5-7 years in computational drug discovery or related R&D environment.
• Strong programming skills in Python, R, and/or Java with scientific libraries (SciPy, NumPy, Pandas, RDKit).

Responsibilities

• Develop and apply computational methods to analyze large-scale biological datasets (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, high-throughput screening).
• Utilize cheminformatics tools and ML to predict drug-target interactions, efficacy, and toxicity.
• Design and optimize virtual screening campaigns and lead optimization strategies.
• Collaborate with medicinal chemists, biologists, and pharmacologists to integrate computational insights into drug discovery.
• Develop and maintain scalable computational pipelines for data processing/analysis in cloud environments.
• Stay updated on advances in computational biology, ML, and drug discovery technologies.
• Communicate complex findings through presentations, reports, and publications to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Contribute to strategic direction of computational drug discovery efforts.
• Mentor junior computational biologists and support their development.
• Proactively identify opportunities to apply novel computational approaches to accelerate drug discovery timelines.

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a Senior Computational Biologist for a fully remote role, applying bioinformatics, cheminformatics, and machine learning to accelerate drug discovery and analyze large-scale data.

You will collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, mentor junior researchers, and stay current with advances in computational biology in a remote-first environment demanding strong communication and self-management.