Senior Principal Research Scientist, Computational Chemistry

Location: South San Francisco, California, United States; onsite four days per week

Salary: $196,000–$242,000 per year

Company

hirify.global is a clinical-stage precision medicine oncology company developing targeted small-molecule therapies for molecularly defined cancer populations.

What you will do

• Lead structure-based drug design meetings and provide senior computational chemistry support to small-molecule discovery teams.
• Support programs from target identification and druggability assessment through hit discovery, lead optimization, and candidate selection.
• Apply structure-, ligand-, and fragment-based modeling, virtual screening, molecular dynamics, free energy methods, quantum chemistry, and cheminformatics.
• Translate computational analyses into actionable recommendations for compound potency, selectivity, functional activity, and developability.
• Serve as a scientific advisor, evaluate new computational workflows, and maintain rigorous and reproducible practices.
• Mentor and coach scientists in structure-based drug design and computational chemistry.

Requirements

• PhD in Computational Chemistry or a related discipline and 9+ years of pharmaceutical or biotechnology industry experience.
• Strong understanding of small-molecule drug discovery and medicinal chemistry principles.
• Expertise in structure-, ligand-, and fragment-based drug discovery, free energy perturbation, molecular dynamics, quantum mechanics, cheminformatics, and ligand affinity estimation.
• Experience with machine learning or AI for molecular design, property prediction, or compound prioritization.
• Experience with Schrödinger modeling software and tools such as MOE or OpenEye, plus programming, scripting, statistics, and data analysis.
• Experience with challenging target classes, including protein–protein interactions and allosteric pockets, and a track record of advancing small-molecule candidates.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative, inclusive, data-driven environment focused on precision oncology and improving outcomes for cancer patients.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage, with 100% employee and 90% dependent coverage.
• 401(k), employee stock purchase plan, wellness programs, and potential merit increases, incentive compensation, and stock option awards.
• Work is performed onsite at the South San Francisco headquarters four days per week.