Remote Senior Computational Chemist: Drug Discovery Lead

Placements24; Durban; Hybrid; ZAR 2,030,000 - 3,046,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote salary

Health insurance

401(k) retirement plan

Home office stipend

Continuous learning support

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Senior Computational Chemist to join a fully remote research team focused on drug discovery. The role requires deep expertise in computational chemistry, molecular modeling, and cheminformatics to design and optimize novel drug candidates from anywhere, collaborating with a globally distributed team of scientists and drug developers.

The ideal candidate will have a PhD and at least 5 years in the pharmaceutical/biotech industry, strong Python programming skills, and

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry, Cheminformatics, Physical Chemistry, or related field.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in computational chemistry within pharma/biotech.
• Expertise with molecular modeling software and simulation techniques.
• Strong programming in Python and cheminformatics toolkits.
• Experience handling large chemical/biological datasets.
• Independent work style with remote collaboration.
• Clear communication across distributed teams.
• Machine learning applied to chemical/biological data a plus.

Responsibilities

• Perform molecular modeling, simulations, and QSAR studies to guide drug design.
• Develop and apply computational chemistry techniques including docking, virtual screening, and free energy calculations.
• Collaborate remotely with chemists, biologists, and pharmacologists to translate data into insights.
• Design and implement cheminformatics workflows for library design and data analysis.
• Evaluate new computational tools and methodologies to enhance discovery.
• Analyze large datasets and present findings to teams.
• Contribute to publications, patents, and internal reports.
• Maintain documentation for projects and analyses.
• Propose innovative computational strategies for drug discovery challenges.

Skills

Python programming

Education

PhD in Computational Chemistry

Tools

Schrodinger

MOE

Cerius2

RDKit

OpenBabel

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a Senior Computational Chemist to join a fully remote research team focused on drug discovery. The role requires deep expertise in computational chemistry, molecular modeling, and cheminformatics to design and optimize novel drug candidates from anywhere, collaborating with a globally distributed team of scientists and drug developers.

The ideal candidate will have a PhD and at least 5 years in the pharmaceutical/biotech industry, strong Python programming skills, and