Principal Scientist, Pharmaceutical Development

Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom

Company

hirify.global provides clinical research services, commercial insights, and healthcare intelligence for the life sciences and healthcare industries.

What you will do

• Design, oversee, and interpret developability, preformulation, and formulation studies for candidate progression.
• Integrate physicochemical, solid-state, biopharmaceutic, formulation, computational, predictive, and AI-enabled data to support development decisions.
• Translate experimental and AI-supported insights into scientifically robust recommendations for drug discovery teams and client programmes.
• Recommend formulation and drug-development strategies for challenging small-molecule candidates, including oral and non-oral delivery approaches.
• Lead pharmaceutical development projects from proposal through delivery and act as the primary scientific contact for clients.
• Provide scientific leadership, support business development, and mentor junior scientists.

Requirements

• Postgraduate degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry, or a related discipline.
• Extensive industrial R&D experience in pharmaceutical development or drug discovery.
• Experience designing and interpreting developability, preformulation, or formulation studies for novel small-molecule APIs.
• Strong knowledge of physicochemical, biopharmaceutic, drug-delivery, and drug-discovery principles.
• Experience leading scientific projects, influencing project direction, communicating complex scientific data, and mentoring colleagues.
• Proactive approach, attention to detail, adaptability, and scientific project-management skills.

Nice to have

• Model-informed, data-driven, computational, predictive, or AI-enabled formulation and developability experience.
• Experience interpreting PK data and applying mechanistic approaches such as DCS or PBPK.
• Knowledge of solubility, dissolution, absorption-risk evaluation, solid-form characterization, and enabling technologies such as spray drying, particle engineering, or lipid-based systems.
• Experience with oral absorption enhancement, non-oral dosage routes, or Beyond Rule of 5 compounds.

Culture & Benefits

• Join a growing Pharmaceutical Development function during a period of transformation.
• Work with experts across Discovery, DMPK, CMC, and wider IQVIA scientific functions.
• Help shape a science-led capability focused on developability, innovation, and client impact.
• Work directly with global pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients.