Senior/Executive Director, Medicinal Chemistry
Genesis Therapeutics
San Diego, CA, USA
Posted on Apr 5, 2025
Genesis Therapeutics is a leader in AI guided rational drug design with the goal to address unmet medical needs in various indications, including oncology and immunology.
Position Summary
The successful candidate will utilize the Genesis Therapeutics platform and guide medicinal chemistry efforts to drug discovery programs from Hit ID through candidate nomination. They will lead and/or collaborate on multidisciplinary drug discovery projects, manage a team of CRO chemists and be responsible for chemistry strategy on programs. They will also lead and participate in collaboration projects with key pharma partners. The candidate will be expected to be a medicinal chemistry leader and mentor chemists and other junior members in the drug discovery organization.
- Formulate medicinal chemistry strategies and utilize the Genesis platform to execute drug discovery programs from Hit ID through candidate nomination.
- Use SBDD principles, optimize physiochemical properties, interpret in vitro and in vivo ADME/PK/Toxicology data, and understand in vitro and in vivo biology data to drive programs.
- Use data visualization software and metric based analysis to form medicinal chemistry hypothesis and prioritize strategies.
- Work with other drug discovery disciplines (biology, DMPK, software engineers, computational chemists) to drive hypothesis driven decisions, improve the platform and contribute to the scientific excellence of the company.
- Communicate and engage regularly with project team members and management.
- Manage a team of CRO chemists anywhere in size from 5-20.
- Supervise internal chemists as well as mentor other scientific disciplines on medicinal chemistry principles.
Education and Experience Requirements
- PhD in synthetic organic chemistry or medicinal chemistry with at least 15 years of industrial drug discovery experience OR
- MS in synthetic organic chemistry with at least 20 years of industrial drug discovery experience.
Skills and Knowledge Required
- Expert medicinal chemistry knowledge with SBDD and physical property-based optimization of drug-like space.
- Expert using metric-based data and data visualization to drive prioritization and efficiency.
- Expert synthetic chemistry knowledge and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to manage external CRO chemistry resources effectively.
- Strong track record of leading programs to the clinic.
- Strong knowledge of DMPK principles, biochemical and cellular assay formats and drug discovery approaches.
- Previous managerial experience.
- Ability to work in dynamic environment, communicate across scientific disciplines and drive decisions.
- Strong communication skills, both in informal team settings as well as professional presentations.
- Motivated team player with strong critical thinking skills, a high degree of independence, strong creative problem-solving skills and ability to adapt to project changes.
Genesis Therapeutics is unifying AI and biotech to discover novel and breakthrough treatments for patients with severe and devastating conditions. Genesis was founded on groundbreaking molecular ML research and since has established itself as the industry leader in AI for small molecule drug discovery. Our team of accomplished biotech leaders and expert drug hunters joins forces with deep learning researchers and software engineers who are pioneering predictive and generative AI technologies for molecules.
Our team has created the industry's most advanced molecular AI platform called GEMS (Genesis Exploration of Molecular Space), to accelerate and optimize small molecule drug discovery and to enable the discovery of novel first-in-class and best-in-class small molecule drugs for challenging and/or undruggable targets.
The company has leveraged GEMS to build an internal pipeline with multiple programs against high-value targets, including data-poor and canonically undruggable targets where GEMS is uniquely advantaged. In addition, Genesis has signed AI-focused platform collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies, including most recently Incyte Corporation (Feb 2025) and Gilead Sciences (Sept 2024).
We raised a $200M series B in August 2023, and have raised over $300M in funding from top technology and biotech investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Rock Springs Capital, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Radical Ventures, NVentures (NVIDIA's VC arm), BlackRock, and Menlo Ventures.
Genesis is headquartered in Burlingame, CA, with a fully integrated laboratory in San Diego. We are proud to be an inclusive workplace and an Equal Opportunity Employer.