Job overview:

The Senior Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry will play a leading role in implementing Compass’ medicinal chemistry strategy to ensure the delivery of candidate molecules of potential value for treating mental health disorders. The chemist will also help build the internal chemistry expertise and infrastructure and work closely with internal and external partners to support the further development of the preclinical project portfolio.

Location: Home based in the United Kingdom (or hybrid/office based in our London office).

Reports to: Director, Medicinal Chemistry and Preformulation.

Roles and responsibilities

(include but are not limited to):

• Play a leading role in Compass’ medicinal chemistry team, working closely with colleagues in multidisciplinary teams, and contributing at all stages of a project, from target evaluation through to candidate nomination
• Act as “Lead chemist” with responsibility for designing and delivering creative medicinal chemistry strategies for one or more portfolio programmes to enable fast project progression and decision-making
• Act as the Project Leader when the opportunity exists, working closely with internal experts in chemistry, pharmacology and ADMET to identify key drug discovery issues, proposing and implementing creative solutions, guiding teams to successful delivery on project milestones and decision points and ensuring efficient resource use
• Work closely with chemists and other scientists at CROs and other external partners, providing scientific and quality oversight of outsourced activities to ensure high productivity and rapid project progression with timely delivery of compounds and data
• Contribute to the wider Compass’ chemistry strategy, building our innovative molecular design capabilities to increase our effectiveness and delivery of high quality preclinical candidates
• Contribute to the building of Compass’ intellectual property portfolio through the filing of patent applications
• Maintain an excellent awareness of contemporary literature in medicinal and synthetic chemistry of particular relevance to projects within the Compass portfolio
• Present medicinal chemistry project plans and discuss results with internal and external collaborators and at external conferences
• Participate in conferences and other training and development opportunities to grow your medicinal chemistry knowledge and expand your network of internal and external contacts across drug discovery disciplines

Candidate Profile:

• MSc, PhD (or equivalent) in organic or medicinal chemistry
• Significant experience of working in a fast-moving drug discovery environment in biotech, the pharmaceutical industry or a drug discovery institute supporting medicinal chemistry within hit-to-lead and lead optimisation projects
• Demonstrates the scientific insight required to define and influence medicinal chemistry strategy via an in depth analysis of project data and a clear understanding of project issues
• Excellent understanding of small molecule drug discovery including multi-parameter optimisation, structure-based and property-based design, and applying computational chemistry and cheminformatic tools
• Proven track-record of contributions to drug discovery projects, exemplified by a high level of innovative contributions to Lead compounds and development candidates and a record of patent inventorship and publications
• Exemplary knowledge of synthetic organic chemistry to design efficient routes to a wide range of target molecules, with several years of experience in a lab-based environment
• Ideally, applicants with have prior experience of working with external chemistry service providers
• Excellent written and oral communication skills
• An effective team player with the capability to work cooperatively in multidisciplinary teams and also able to work independently and proactively in order to deliver corporate objectives
• Able to prioritise and deploy resources effectively to align with project goals
• Able to represent medicinal chemistry and present project reviews at cross-functional meetings with senior management
• Familiarity with standard chemistry databases and software