Scientist, Cheminformatics

Octant Bio•Emeryville, CA

2d•$150,000 - $190,000•Onsite

About The Position

Octant is seeking a scientist with cheminformatics expertise to join their dynamic and multidisciplinary research team. The core focus of this role will be to guide assay development and evaluate the resulting data using chemical reasoning, expanding the capabilities of the Octant Navigator platform. The role will begin with the OpenADMET effort, focusing on transforming high-throughput ADMET datasets into chemical insight for both Octant's drug programs and the open science community, and will broaden into internal platform work within the first year. The scientist will apply chemical intuition and statistical rigor to all stages of the work, from assay development to compound selection to analysis at scale. This role requires a motivated individual with a team-first mindset, excellent communication skills, and the ability to thrive in a dynamic and fast-paced environment.

Requirements

A PhD in Chemistry, Cheminformatics, Chemical Biology, Computational Chemistry, or a related discipline.
3-5 years of research experience. Industry preferred, but exceptional recent PhD graduates with strong relevant experience are encouraged to apply.
Expertise in organic and/or medicinal chemistry, ideally including DMPK; ability to reason about structure-property relationships.
Practical analytical chemistry knowledge, especially chromatography (HPLC, SFC, LC-MS): retention behavior, failure modes, and ability to differentiate signal from artifact.
Strong statistics and data science fundamentals, including experiment design, batch effects, and uncertainty; ability to develop quantitative assays and generate and analyze large datasets.
Solid software skills: fluency in Python and/or R and the standard cheminformatics stack (e.g., RDKit, pandas), writing reproducible analyses that other people can actually run and build on.
Experience working side-by-side with experimentalists, chemists, engineers, and data scientists; an instinct for building analyses and tools that scientists can run themselves.
Excitement about open science: much of this work will be public-facing through OpenADMET, a rare opportunity in drug discovery.
Flexibility to rapidly changing priorities and project needs, with the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. Comfortable with ambiguity and able to pivot strategies as needed to meet project goals.
Strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities, with a proactive approach to anticipating potential issues and addressing them before they become critical.
A drive to build a successful company in your role as a cheminformatician and beyond.

Responsibilities

Partner with analytical chemists and biologists to develop high-throughput ADMET assays, applying chemical reasoning to assess data quality and validity.
Develop the experimental designs and analyses that turn those assays into robust, quantitative DMPK measurements that scale to hundreds of thousands of compounds.
Guide compound and building-block selection connecting our in-house high throughput synthesis capabilities to ADMET assays and OpenADMET's public competitions, balancing scientific value with experimental feasibility.
Develop and contribute to the data and computational infrastructure needed to process assay results at scale, enabling scientists to access and analyze their own data in consistent, statistically sound ways.
Collaborate with drug discovery scientists to translate OpenADMET capabilities into platform tools that benefit Octant’s program teams, and help shape and prioritize assay and tool development.
Refine our chemistry platform and deliver increasingly valuable data to program teams, helping realize our vision for high-throughput chemical learning and SAR.
Work hand-in-hand with machine learning scientists, software engineers, biologists, chemists, and automation engineers.