Cheminformatics Senior Research Scientist

We are seeking a motivated, creative, and experienced cheminformatics scientist to join the Data & Computational Sciences (DCS) team at the Boston, MA or San Diego, CA site of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. As an integral member of our Chemical Data Science team, the candidate will work on developing core cheminformatics capabilities and applying cheminformatics tools and techniques in our disease programs. This includes supporting virtual screening (benchmarking, implementing and applying various techniques), developing new cheminformatic methods across the design-make-test-analyze cycles and enhance our small molecule predictive modelling platform. The candidate will collaborate closely with colleagues in DCS and experimental scientists across Vertex to drive our research programs forward and with our colleagues in Data Technology Engineering (DTE) to deploy relevant methods in production.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Enhance and maintain our virtual screening platform and associated screening databases
• Actively contribute to the development of our core cheminformatics tools and libraries
• Develop and apply cheminformatics techniques to improve hit identification and hit-to-lead processes
• Contribute to small molecule predictive modelling activities across programs
• Identify, evaluate and adopt new cheminformatics and AI/ML technology and software from various sources

Education and Experience:

• Ph.D. (or equivalent degree) in engineering, science or math and 2-5 years of productive, relevant post-doctoral employment experience, or
• Master's Degree (or equivalent degree) in similar fields and 5+ years of productive, relevant employment experience, or
• Bachelor's Degree (or equivalent degree) in similar fields and 8+ years of productive, relevant employment experience
• Typically requires 5 years experience or the equivalent combination of education and experience
• Very strong expertise in cheminformatics including clustering, chemical fingerprints, SMARTS, chemical reactions, etc.
• Very strong programming skills, ideally in Python, with demonstrated 1+ years of experience and/or active contributions to open-source projects
• Proficiency with at least one cheminformatics framework (OEToolkit and/or RDKit preferred)
• Experience with relational databases and SQL
• Proficiency in Linux environment and experience with version control practices and tools
• Experience in the use of machine learning methods and toolkits (such as scikit-learn) as applied to chemical or biological data
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• A team-oriented growth mindset that welcomes feedback from others and supports other team members; a positive attitude that enthusiastically tackles and overcomes challenges