Associate Director/Computational Chemistry

Job Description: Associate Director/Computational Chemistry
Do you want to grow a company that positively impacts the world? At Aria Pharmaceuticals, we discover and develop first-in-class small molecules. We are seeking a talented and highly motivated computational chemist with a strong background in Structure Based Drug Design to join our team. You will be an integral member of interdisciplinary drug discovery project teams, where you will apply virtual screening, computational chemistry, informatics, and data-mining methods to help drive lead optimization and candidate selection. This role will be involved in the design, execution, analysis, and interpretation of the computational outputs for the medicinal chemistry optimization. We have a broad pipeline of in-house programs in multiple therapeutic areas.

***About us:*
Aria Pharmaceuticals (formerly twoXAR Pharmaceuticals) is a preclinical-stage pharmaceutical company discovering and developing novel small molecule therapies for complex and hard-to-treat diseases. Too many patients today are in need of breakthrough treatments across many complicated diseases – they can’t wait. That’s why at Aria, we have redefined the drug discovery approach, saving years in the process and increasing success rates 30 times higher than traditional methods. At Aria, we’ve shown promise across a diverse range of therapeutic areas with the ability to address over 1,000 diseases.

Responsibilities

• Represent Computational Chemistry as the subject matter expert for nonclinical research and development
• As part of a Nonclinical R&D team of medicinal chemists, structural biologists, and discovery biologists, you will use state-of-the-art computational software, computer aided drug design and simulation techniques to help drive lead optimization and candidate selection
• Participate in the management of and liaison with CROs conducting the computational chemistry efforts to support hit to lead, lead optimization, and IND-candidate selection
• The successful candidate will independently pursue research projects, implement novel computational workflows and support a dynamic multi-disciplinary team focused on moving projects from the hit identification stage to the discovery of clinical candidate.
• Responsible for the analysis, interpretation, integration and reporting of computational chemistry data generated with external vendors/CROs
• Partner with and support medicinal chemistry team during lead optimization related activities such as docking and scoring of the molecules from rational drug design

Qualifications/Requirements

• Ph.D. in Chemistry, Biophysics, Chemical Biology (or related fields) with demonstrated computational chemistry focus in small molecule drug design with at least 10-12 years of industry experience
• Established skills in computer aided drug design, knowledge of bioinformatics and structural biology is required
• Practical working experience in computational chemistry software (e.g. Schrodinger, ICM Molsoft, OpenEye, Dotmatics, others) and cloud-based computing
• Proven track record in one or more of the following: docking studies, virtual screening, druggability analysis, structure-based design for lead optimization, free energy perturbation, and molecular dynamics simulation
• Excellent communication of design rationale, key experimental results, issues and accomplishments in appropriate verbal and written form
• Solid track record of scientific accomplishment demonstrated by publications, patents, or presentations
• Maintains excellent scientific expertise in the latest developments in computational chemistry
• Good ability to manage own priorities and deliverables, both independently and in the team setting
• Ability to work effectively in a highly interdisciplinary team

Aria Pharmaceuticals is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.