What are the responsibilities and job description for the Cheminformatics Scientist position at Nurix?
Nurix Therapeutics is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of targeted protein degradation medicines, the next frontier in innovative drug design aimed at improving treatment options for patients with cancer and inflammatory diseases. Powered by a fully AI-integrated discovery engine capable of tackling any protein class, and coupled with unparalleled ligase expertise, Nurix’s dedicated team has built a formidable advantage in translating the science of targeted protein degradation into clinical advancements. Nurix aims to establish degrader-based treatments at the forefront of patient care, writing medicine’s next chapter with a new script to outmatch disease.
Position
Nurix is seeking a highly qualified Cheminformatics Scientist to join the Early Drug Discovery team, specifically within the Cheminformatics and Machine Learning department. This individual contributor role will play a crucial part in advancing our drug discovery efforts by designing, implementing, and optimizing cheminformatics tools and workflows. While the primary emphasis of this role will be supporting our DNA Encoded Library (DEL) and DEL-AI platforms, the successful candidate will additionally advance broader cheminformatics support for our degrader discovery and development teams. The successful candidate will collaborate extensively with teams in DEL, machine learning, IT & informatics, medicinal chemistry, and early discovery, contributing to all stages of the drug discovery pipeline, from library design and data analysis to hit identification and lead optimization.
Responsibilities
- Support project teams by providing cheminformatics expertise and contributing to data interpretation and decision-making.
- Develop and implement tools and workflows for enabling application of our DEL platform, including library enumeration, data query, extraction, interpretation, and hit follow-up.
- Collaborate with the DEL production team to design libraries, including chemical space analysis, building block and codon selection, library onboarding, and quality control.
- Design, create, and test new cheminformatics tools and visualizations to support DEL and machine learning data analysis, as well as general drug discovery data needs.
- Maintain and enhance existing cheminformatics codebases, ensuring their reliability and performance.
- Develop and deploy advanced queries to integrate data and enable interpretation from diverse Nurix databases
Required Skills & Experience:
- Ph.D. in Chemistry, Cheminformatics, or a related field with 0-3 years post-Ph.D. experience
- Demonstrated expertise in cheminformatics principles and techniques, including reaction SMARTS, chemical fingerprints, similarity comparison, and clustering.
- Direct experience with informatics and cheminformatics solutions for DNA Encoded Libraries
- Proficiency in data processing, analysis, and visualization software (e.g., KNIME, Spotfire)
- Experience with database query languages (e.g., PostgreSQL, Oracle, AWS).
- Strong programming skills in Python for data analysis, visualization, and tool development, including experience with relevant libraries such as Pandas, Matplotlib, and RDKit.
Preferred Skills & Experience
- Excellent organization and communication with effective presentation skills
- Have experience building and designing databases
- Basic understanding of chemistry and medicinal chemistry concepts
Culture & Team Fit:
- Ability to work collaboratively across multiple groups within the organization
- Self-driven and enthusiastic with proficiencies to deliver in a dynamic environment
- Curious mindset with a willingness and flexibility to learn new skills
- High level of creativity and productivity with strong problem-solving skills
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