Scientist I - Protein API

About the Department

Our Research & Development organization brings together the best minds in life science innovation. The teams located in facilities in Lexington, Watertown, Cambridge and Seattle reflect the full R&D continuum, from early research through late-stage clinical development. Here, we are building for the future, creating a distinct R&D community based on collaboration, partnerships, and cutting-edge research across multiple modalities and therapeutic areas. We recognize that improving human health starts here and that patients rely on us. Our R&D hub merges biotech speed and agility with large pharmaceutical company quality, resources, and stability, uniting the best of both worlds to develop new medicines for patients.

The Position

In your role as Scientist I in peptide chemistry, you will work closely with a highly skilled team of peptide medicinal chemists and multi-disciplinary project teams to support peptide drug discovery and lead optimization activities. As a recognized expert in peptide and macrocycle medicinal and synthetic chemistry, you will help mature ideas into proof-of-concept studies and drive research projects from PoC to lead candidate selection. You will demonstrate a high degree of independence, creativity, and scientific acumen to tackle highly complex problems. As an experienced scientist with significant prior work in applied drug research, you will propose solutions and experiments that demonstrate an understanding not only of your own area of expertise, but also that of therapy area and modality strategy and long-term business needs. You may be called upon to take on project leadership and technical coordination roles, ensuring that experiments are planned and executed, project deliverables are met successfully and on time, and stakeholder relationships are properly managed. Along the way, you will keep excellent records to ensure data integrity and reproducibility and communicate experimental results to other colleagues in the peptide chemistry team and to diverse project teams. You will help evaluate external technologies and assets and identify opportunities that add value or meet critical business needs. You will have opportunities to engage in external innovation, including proposing and managing external collaborations with academic research groups or other industry organizations. You will stay highly engaged with the external scientific community through authorship of patents, journal articles, and/or participation in scientific conferences. In your daily work, you will collaborate closely with scientists within the Chemical Biology team, other teams across our growing US R&D Hub, and global project teams. The working environment in R&ED is dynamic and innovative and involves interactions with colleagues from research sites in Denmark, UK, and China, with an excellent opportunity to establish a strong global scientific network.

Relationships

Internal relationships include project teams and research colleagues in the greater Boston area and at research sites elsewhere in the US, Denmark, China, and the UK. Communicates data externally when required. Reports to of the head of Chemical Biology. Individual Contributor: does not manage other employees or contingent workers.

Essential Functions

• Applies deep subject matter expertise in peptide and macrocycle synthetic and medicinal chemistry to discover lead candidate drug molecules.
• Takes on project management and technical coordination roles and displays strong scientific leadership qualities to ensure research projects meet deliverables and deadlines.
• Applies cutting edge techniques in laboratory automation to maximize throughput in peptide and macrocycle discovery workflows.
• Effectively communicates scientific proposals, data, and conclusions to diverse audiences and stakeholders.
• Is viewed internally as a subject matter expert in peptide and macrocycle discovery with ability to solve complex problems and contribute beyond own area of expertise.
• Participates in external collaborations and strategic partnerships, especially but not limited to the academic and biotech community in the greater Boston area, to further company goals related to therapeutic peptide and macrocycle discovery.
• Engages with the external peptide and macrocycle field by contributing to the filing of patents to secure intellectual property rights, publication of research in high impact journals, and participation and presentation at scientific conferences.
• Occasionally mentors more junior scientists in the peptide field or in other areas of Chemical Biology to increase the teams overall scientific acumen and impact, develop junior talents, and create a strong team culture.
• Analyzes highly complex technical data from experiments to draw conclusions, document results, and secure intellectual property rights.
• Evaluates new peptide and macrocycle discovery technologies and provides recommendations on the potential for their internalization.
• Ensures data integrity so that the peptide chemistry group abides by FAIR data standards, furnishing project teams with the highest quality data and in a timely fashion to enable efficient decision-making, and enabling long-term data repurposing and machine learning ambitions.

Qualifications

• A Bachelors degree with 6 or more years of relevant technical experience, a Masters degree with 4 or more years of relevant technical experience, or a PhD with little or no relevant industry or post-doctorate experience is required. A degree within chemistry or biochemistry is preferred.
• Has a track record of participating in peptide and macrocycle drug discovery efforts as evidenced through publication in relevant literature.
• Possesses a deep understanding of synthetic organic chemistry, peptide and macrocycle drug modalities, as well as principles of peptide and macrocycle medicinal chemistry.
• First-hand experience with peptide and macrocycle discovery projects, including molecular design, structural modelling techniques, synthetic and analytical chemistry, and the development of screening funnels to evaluate compound structure-function relationships, safety, and developability.
• First-hand experience in the execution of peptide and macrocycle discovery projects in a wet-lab environment, including synthesis, isolation, purification, and characterization.
• Experience with high-throughput discovery techniques, including parallel synthesis and automated preparative purification, automated analytical chemistry, and automated liquid handling.
• Strong working knowledge of high-throughput discovery techniques including mRNA display, phage display, DNA-encoded libraries, and affinity-selection-mass-spectrometry.
• Capable of handling and delegating highly complex tasks, balancing priorities, and adapting to changing organizational needs.
• Experience with industry standard scientific software including electronic record-keeping, entity registration, and inventory management tools as well as advanced data processing tools such as Prism, Python, and R.
• Familiarity with concepts in bioconjugation including common bio-orthogonal reactions and protocols for generating and characterizing bioconjugates.
• Familiarity with concepts and techniques in peptide biophysical characterization.
• Familiarity with concepts and techniques in structure prediction, modelling, and computational design of peptides, proteins, and other biologics.
• Demonstrates excellent verbal and written communication skills.

0-10% Overnight travel is required.

We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants.

At Novo Nordisk we recognize that it is no longer good enough to aspire to be the best company in the world. We need to aspire to be the best company for the world and we know that this is only possible with talented employees with diverse perspectives, backgrounds and cultures. We are therefore committed to creating an inclusive culture that celebrates the diversity of our employees, the patients we serve and communities we operate in. Together, were life changing.

Novo Nordisk is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by local, state or federal laws, rules or regulations.

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