Senior Cheminformatics Lead — Drug Discovery & Data Tools

Placements24; Durban; On-site; ZAR 1,800,000 - 2,400,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Performance bonus

Retirement plan

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Principal Cheminformatician in Durban to lead design and deployment of cheminformatics platforms for drug discovery. You will drive SAR analyses, virtual screening, and cross-functional collaboration with chemists and biologists across state-of-the-art facilities.

The role requires a PhD in a related field and 8+ years in pharma/biotech cheminformatics, with expertise in Python, RDKit, and data mining. Office-based in Durban with excellent research resources.

Qualifications

• PhD required in Cheminformatics/Computational Chemistry or related field with strong computational focus.
• Minimum 8 years of experience in cheminformatics/computational chemistry in pharma/biotech.
• Proficiency in Python programming and data handling with RDKit/Open Babel; SQL experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of cheminformatics platforms and workflows for drug discovery.
• Apply computational methods to analyze large chemical datasets and SAR.
• Develop and optimize virtual screening strategies to identify leads.
• Collaborate with medicinal chemists, computational chemists, and biologists to apply insights.
• Manage and curate chemical databases ensuring data quality and accessibility.
• Stay updated on cheminformatics, computational chemistry, and AI/ML applications.
• Mentor junior staff and influence strategic direction of computational discovery.
• Prepare technical reports, publications and presentations for internal/external audiences.

Skills

Cheminformatics

Computational chemistry

Data mining

Python

RDKit

Open Babel

SQL

Leadership

Communication

Education

PhD in Cheminformatics/Computational Chemistry

Tools

RDKit

Open Babel

Schrödinger

MOE

Pipeline Pilot

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a Principal Cheminformatician in Durban to lead design and deployment of cheminformatics platforms for drug discovery. You will drive SAR analyses, virtual screening, and cross-functional collaboration with chemists and biologists across state-of-the-art facilities.

The role requires a PhD in a related field and 8+ years in pharma/biotech cheminformatics, with expertise in Python, RDKit, and data mining. Office-based in Durban with excellent research resources.