Senior Scientist

Location – DISC, Cambridge, UK (Hybrid 3 days per week minimum on-site)

Inside IR35

Duration – 12 months

Make a meaningful difference at AstraZeneca!

Bring out the best in each other, and yourself, by working together as one.

When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we unleash bold thinking with the power to inspire life-changing medicines. In-person working give us the platform we need to connect, work at pace and challenge perceptions. That’s why we work, on average, a minimum of three days per week from the office. But that doesn’t mean we’re not flexible. We balance the expectation of being in the office while respecting individual flexibility. Join us in our unique and ambitious world.

​At AstraZeneca we work together across global boundaries to make an impact and find answers to challenges. We do this with the upmost integrity even in the most difficult situations because we are committed to doing the right thing. We continuously forge partnerships that help pursue world-class medicines in new ways, combining our people’s exceptional skills with those of people from all over the globe.

The Biologics Engineering team is responsible for the discovery and optimisation of biological candidate drugs to support all therapy area drug discovery pipelines and for the development of in-house biologics discovery platforms and novel drug modalities to support future drug discovery efforts! Central to this effort are the Augmented Biologics Discovery & Design team who are building on existing technologies to advance learning from the large and complex data sets we generate and excitingly the team is growing to meet this challenge! This role provides the opportunity for a skilled and motivated protein engineer with computational structural biology skills.

Accountabilities

• Contribute to the development of an end-to-end data analysis capability within Biologics Engineering team as part of a cross-functional team
• Work collaboratively with data and drug discovery scientists to establish structural analytics workflows for biologics discovery
• Drive innovative structural and machine learning methods for the analysis and design of therapeutic proteins
• Participation in strategic external collaborations
• Support testing and verification of data management analyses and tools and pipelines in collaboration with AZ partners
• Demonstrate effective communication to translate complex concepts to non-experts in internal and external scientific meetings

Essential Skills

• Higher education qualification in relevant field (e.g. Protein Engineering, Structural Biology, Structural Informatics, Bioengineering, Biomedical sciences)
• Knowledge of computational biology and demonstrated application of data analysis methods
• Experience with Python and analysis of structural, sequence and experimental data.
• Experience with structural modelling platforms (e.g. Schrodinger, Rosetta etc)
• Capability of successfully running multiple simultaneous projects
• Strong, professional communication skills and excellent attention to detail, capable of developing good working relationships with diverse individuals
• Experience working within a team environment
• Acts with integrity and does the right thing

Desirable Skills

• Knowledge of AI and machine learning methods applied to protein structure and Biologics design
• Experienced in use of biologics databases (e.g. Genedata Biologics)
• Awareness of data requirements for machine learning to model biological data
• Familiarity with wet lab protein engineering techniques.
• Previous experience within a collaborative in-silico and wet lab projects.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics. We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.