Hybrid Senior Director, Computational Drug Discovery

at Apheris

• Job title: Senior Director, Computational Drug Discovery
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Postgraduate Degree
• Location requirements: Hybrid, United States

About the role

• Senior Director leading a computational drug discovery team at Apheris, collaborating with pharma partners to apply AI in drug research.

Responsibilities

• Own scientific direction across modalities, data, and workflows.
• Define which drug discovery problems, modalities, and data types Apheris prioritizes with our product offerings.
• Guide how applications and models should evolve to remain maximally useful to pharma teams.
• Balance scientific ambition with practicality and adoption in customer environments.
• Own the “why” and high-level structure of new scientific initiatives and proposals, while partnering closely with internal ML and science teams on detailed methodology and execution.
• Build and lead an established, growing computational drug discovery team.
• Lead a core team already in place, including a senior medicinal chemist and a forward-deployed scientist, both with top-tier academic and industry backgrounds.
• Hire and integrate 1–2 additional team members over the next 6–9 months as customer demand scales.
• Set clear direction and execution standards across all customer-facing programs.
• Oversee scientific quality and program enablement rather than personally owning detailed technical implementation.
• Act as the senior counterpart to pharma R&D leaders.
• Engage comfortably and credibly with leading computational drug discovery scientists at large pharmaceutical companies.
• Lead deep scientific discussions on program strategy, model application, and decision-making trade-offs.
• Provide authoritative guidance grounded in real-world drug discovery experience.
• Serve as the visible scientific face to customers, including at senior leadership level.
• Represent Apheris in the ecosystem.
• Build trust and credibility through talks and direct engagement with the community.
• Strengthen Apheris’ reputation as a serious, neutral partner for computational drug discovery.
• Contribute to strategic narratives around why federated and AI-driven approaches enable better drug programs, supported by internal ML and science teams for technical manuscript writing.
• Oversee and challenge program-level recommendations to ensure strategic alignment and scientific rigor.
• Drive hands-on scientific leadership across customer programs.
• Give concrete, actionable scientific direction to application scientists and customer teams.
• Ensure recommendations reflect how discovery programs are actually run, not theoretical workflows.
• Review and challenge analyses, models, and conclusions to maintain a high scientific bar.
• Partner closely with Product and ML/AI teams.
• Translate customer needs and scientific insight into clear product and model requirements.
• Shape prioritization decisions by grounding them in customer impact and discovery realities.
• Act as a scientific bridge between customers and internal development teams.

Requirements

• PhD in computational chemistry, cheminformatics, computational drug discovery, or a closely related field.
• 8 + years of post-PhD industry experience in computational drug discovery or computational chemistry, including proven impact on drug discovery programs from hit finding through lead optimization.
• Strong practical understanding of structure-based and ligand-based design, ADMET modelling, and integration of experimental and biophysical data in real drug programs.
• Solid understanding of modern ML approaches in drug discovery, with sound judgment on where ML materially improves outcomes.
• Strong scientific credibility, demonstrated through prior roles at leading pharma, top-tier biotech, or recognized computational drug discovery technology providers, and ideally a solid publication record.
• Demonstrated experience leading and mentoring computational drug discovery teams.
• Comfortable operating hands-on in a fast-moving, venture-backed, remote-first environment.
• Clear motivation to enable customer drug discovery programs rather than run internal pipelines.
• Nice to have: Background as an application scientist at a leading computational chemistry or drug discovery software provider.
• Experience leading computational drug discovery teams at a TechBio or advanced biotech.
• Prior exposure to federated, multi-partner data collaborations.
• Experience shaping product direction for scientific software platforms.

Benefits

• Direct collaboration with world-leading computational drug discovery scientists across major pharmaceutical companies.
• A leadership role with real influence on company direction, scientific priorities, and product strategy, working closely with the founders.
• Regular interaction with our Scientific Advisory Board and external experts at the forefront of the field.
• The opportunity to build and scale the computational drug discovery function from the ground up.
• Competitive compensation, including meaningful early-stage virtual share options.
• Generous holiday allowance.
• Great suite of benefits, including a wellbeing budget, mental health benefits, a work-from-home budget, a co-working stipend and a learning and development budget.
• Remote-first working – work where you work best, whether from home or a co-working space near you.
• Office Days at our Berlin HQ or a different European location (3x a year).