Senior Principal Research Scientist, Computational Chemistry

Job Description

• Lead structure-based drug design meetings with medicinal chemists and provide senior-level, hands-on drug design and computational chemistry support to small molecule drug discovery project teams
• Contribute to programs from target identification through lead optimization and drug candidate selection
• Apply structure-, ligand-, and fragment-based modeling to guide medicinal chemistry design
• Use molecular dynamics, free energy methods, quantum chemistry, and cheminformatics to address complex design and prioritization questions
• Translate computational analyses into clear, actionable compound design recommendations
• Serve as a highly experienced computational contributor and scientific advisor within project teams
• Mentor and coach other scientists in structure-based drug design through technical guidance and scientific discussion
• Evaluate new computational methods, tools, and workflows and apply them when they add clear value
• Maintain scientific rigor, reproducibility, and best practices in an industry drug discovery environment

Requirements

• PhD in Computational Chemistry or a related discipline with 9+ years of pharmaceutical or biotechnology industry experience
• Strong understanding of small molecule drug discovery and medicinal chemistry principles
• Demonstrated expertise in structure-, ligand-, and fragment-based drug discovery
• Expertise in free energy perturbation, molecular dynamics, quantum mechanics, cheminformatics, and ligand affinity estimation methods
• Proven ability to independently deliver computational work that influences medicinal chemistry decisions and project outcomes
• Able to manage priorities across multiple discovery programs
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Experience applying machine learning or AI methods to molecular design, property prediction, or compound prioritization
• Experience with Schrödinger modeling software and others (e.g., MOE, OpenEye)
• Programming, scripting, statistics, and data analysis experience applied to drug discovery
• Experience working on challenging target classes, including protein–protein interactions and allosteric pockets
• Track record of contributing to discovery programs that advance high-quality small molecule drug candidates

Qualifications

IDEAYA Biosciences is a precision medicine oncology company committed to the discovery, development, and commercialization of transformative therapies for cancer. Our approach integrates expertise in small-molecule drug discovery, structural biology and bioinformatics with robust internal capabilities in identifying and validating translational biomarkers to develop tailored, potentially first-in-class targeted therapies aligned to the genetic drivers of disease. We have built a deep pipeline of product candidates focused on synthetic lethality and antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, for molecularly defined solid tumor indications.

Skills

The ideal candidate will possess a strong foundation in computational chemistry, with a proven track record of success in pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries. They should be able to effectively communicate complex scientific concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, and be comfortable working collaboratively within interdisciplinary teams.

Benefits

IDEAYA offers a competitive total rewards package that reflects our pay-for-performance philosophy. Employees are eligible to be considered for merit-based salary increases, company discretionary short-term incentive plan participation, and company discretionary stock option awards (based on board approval).

The comprehensive benefits package includes, but is not limited to, medical/dental/vision coverage (100% company paid for employees and 90% company paid for dependents), 401k, ESPP, and wellness programs.

Pay

The expected salary range for the role of Senior Principal Research Scientist, Computational Chemistry is $196,000 - $242,000. The final salary offered to a successful candidate will depend on several factors that may include but are not limited to the office location where this open position is located, the final candidates’ experience within their profession, experience in the disease areas we are striving to make an impact in as a company, length of time within the industry, educational background, and performance during the interview process.

Schedule

This position is based in our South San Francisco headquarter office and required to be onsite four days per week per our company policy.