(Senior) Computational Drug Designer

Your work will change lives. Including your own. 

The Impact You’ll Make

Recursion is seeking a (Senior) Computational Drug Designer to join our Computational Drug Design Group in either Oxford (UK), London (UK), Toronto (CA), or Salt Lake City (USA). As an integral member of a multidisciplinary design team, you will collaborate closely with medicinal chemists, biologists, ADME and engineers to drive drug discovery using Recursion’s cutting-edge Design Platform. Leveraging AI/ML, computational chemistry and drug design tools, you will help invent new medicines with unprecedented productivity.

Beyond hands-on project work, you’ll have opportunities to present your findings to external partners, attend industry-leading conferences, and play a role in shaping the future of computational drug discovery. We provide a supportive, coaching-driven environment to help you grow, learn, and make a lasting impact.

In this role, you will:

• Design potential drug molecules using cutting-edge AI/ML, molecular dynamics, synthesis-aware generative design and active learning.
• Build and execute generative workflows, collaborating with medicinal chemists and biologists to refine and prioritize designs.
• Advance Recursion’s technology platform by sharing insights and innovations with researchers and engineers.
• Lead technical discussions on molecular designs with external collaborators.
• Present your work to peers, senior stakeholders, and external partners.
• Stay at the forefront of computational drug design by engaging with the latest scientific advances.

The Team You’ll Join 

You will become part of a world-class team of scientists dedicated to revolutionizing drug discovery through Recursion’s industry-leading small molecule design platform. Our team works at the cutting edge of innovation, tackling structurally enabled targets, non-structurally enabled targets, and phenomics-derived projects across a diverse range of therapeutic areas. By integrating our proprietary AI-driven technology with advanced computational biophysics, we accelerate the identification and optimization of lead series with unprecedented speed, efficiency, and precision. Join us in shaping the future of medicine and bringing transformative therapies to patients faster than ever before. 

The Experience You’ll Need

Essential skills:

• PhD or equivalent professional expertise in cheminformatics, computational chemistry, computational biophysics, bioinformatics, or a related field at the intersection of computing and drug discovery.
• Deep understanding of medicinal chemistry principles and their application in drug discovery.
• Hands-on experience in computational chemistry and molecular modeling to explore structure-activity relationships.
• Practical data science skills for analyzing large datasets and applying multi-parameter optimization techniques.
• Passion for continuous learning and expanding your computational drug discovery knowledge.
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills, with the ability to effectively engage both internal teams and external stakeholders.

Desirable skills:

• Strong interest in AI/ML and its application to drug discovery.
• Knowledge of pharmacokinetics and ADME data interpretation.
• Experience applying machine learning techniques for predictive modeling and generative molecule design.
• Proficiency in Python, OpenEye toolkits, RDKit, and other relevant computational chemistry tools.

Working Location:

This position is based at our office located in either Oxford (UK), London (UK), Toronto (CA), or Salt Lake City (USA). Please note that we are a hybrid environment and ask that employees spend 50% of their time in the office. 

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The Values We Hope You Share:

• We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust. 
• We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.
• We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.
• We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.
• We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy—leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together. 

Our values underpin the employee experience at Recursion. They are the character and personality of the company demonstrated through how we communicate, support one another, spend our time, make decisions, and celebrate collectively.

More About Recursion 

Recursion is a clinical stage TechBio company leading the space by decoding biology to industrialize drug discovery. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, a platform built across diverse technologies that continuously expands one of the world’s largest proprietary biological and chemical datasets. Recursion leverages sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to distill from its dataset a collection of trillions of searchable relationships across biology and chemistry unconstrained by human bias. By commanding massive experimental scale — up to millions of wet lab experiments weekly — and massive computational scale — owning and operating one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Recursion is uniting technology, biology and chemistry to advance the future of medicine.

Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City, where it is a founding member of BioHive, the Utah life sciences industry collective. Recursion also has offices in London, Toronto, Montreal and the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at www.Recursion.com, or connect on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values diversity and inclusion.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation. 

Recursion welcomes and encourages applications from people with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Recursion Pharmaceuticals and its affiliate companies do not accept resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Recursion or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Recursion’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Recursion, and Recursion will not owe any referral or other fees. Our team will communicate directly with candidates who are not represented by an agent or intermediary unless otherwise agreed to prior to interviewing for the job.