Principal or Senior Scientist in Computational Chemistry

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at https://www.jnj.com

Job Function:

Discovery & Pre-Clinical/Clinical Development

Job Sub Function:

Pharmaceutical Product R&D

Job Category:

Scientific/Technology

All Job Posting Locations:

Beerse, Antwerp, Belgium

Job Description:

As a Senior or Principal Scientist within the Center for Computational Chemistry and Advanced Modelling, you play a pivotal role in reshaping how we develop small molecule medicine & therapies by leveraging quantum chemical simulations and other computational chemistry methods.

We are seeking for a passionate computational chemist to join our team. The successful candidate will be part of a quantum chemistry team that focuses on applying and developing quantum chemical and machine learning workflows to predict the outcome of syntheses and to assess various chemical degradation pathways in silico. They will work in interdisciplinary teams and collaborate closely with scientists at various stages of drug discovery and development to contribute to delivering the most stable NME’s (New Molecule Entities), efficient synthesis processes, and robust drug products. They will use the currently established computational methods to support new and ongoing projects and expand this methodology further.

Role and responsibilities

• Support interdisciplinary drug discovery and development teams by applying first-principle and machine learning methods for studying chemical reactions in-silico.
• Continue development of the computational chemistry methods by establishing internal research lines and by collaborating with external groups.
• Proactively identify new areas that could be solved using quantum chemical or data-driven methods.
• Translate the evolving field into concrete and actionable recommendations for the discovery and development portfolio. 
• Interact and collaborate with scientists across discovery and development organizations, IT and statistics.

Qualifications & Experience

• A PhD in computational or organic chemistry or related field is required
• Relevant postdoctoral experience is preferred for Senior Scientist
• Minimum of 3 years experience in applying computational methods to support drug product development is required for Principal Scientist

Required Experience and Skills 

• Extensive experience in using quantum chemical methods to model reactions in condensed phase (e.g., in the context of degradation modelling, reaction or homogeneous catalyst optimization and mechanistic understanding)
• Firm knowledge of (physical) organic chemistry and reaction mechanisms
• Comfortable working in Linux command line environment
• Experience with programming languages such as Python and shell scripting
• Experience with one or more of the following is considered an advantage: machine learning methods and cheminformatics, development of automatic large-scale quantum chemical workflows, computational enzyme catalysis.
• Exposure to one or more other disciplines of relevance to drug discovery, such as synthetic organic chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, formulation, biochemistry, physical or analytical chemistry
• Preferably experienced in working in matrix teams (ideally in an industrial or semi-industrial setting)
• Track record in original scientific publications and conference contributions
• Ability to build bridges between colleagues, disciplines, departments, and collaborators 
• Willing to challenge the status quo in a constructive manner suggesting alternative solutions for existing problems