Vertex Summer Intern 2026, Preclinical Formulation

Vertex Pharmaceuticals•San Diego, CA

9d•$20 - $32•Hybrid

About The Position

Kickstart Your Career at Vertex! Are you ready to make a real impact? At Vertex, our mission is to tackle serious diseases and to change lives, for the better, for the future. Our aim is to give you the skills, insights, and career guidance to be an important part of that future; to turn your potential into progression. As a Vertex intern or co-op, you’ll work on meaningful projects, collaborate with talented teams, and learn from industry leaders. We’re passionate about innovation, inclusion, and supporting your growth—inside and outside the lab. The Vertex Preclinical Formulation internship program is a multi-week experiential training program for students currently working towards an undergraduate or advanced degree in Pharmacy, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering, Biochemical Engineering, or a related field of study. If you are passionate, collaborative, and growth-minded, an internship at Vertex will help you gain meaningful experience in our formulation functional areas and serve as a launchpad for your career. The Preclinical Formulation department located in San Diego, CA is responsible for serving the Chemistry team and preparing Vertex medicines for dosing. To execute this function, we run benchtop experiments to understand how the compounds may translate to animal models. The focus of this position is on automating one of these experiments using a liquid/solid handling robot. We are looking for an enthusiastic intern to learn the robot software, code the workflow, and execute the experiment in simulation/real. The project will conclude with a PowerPoint and/or poster presentation to the site on findings.

Requirements

Enrolled in an undergraduate (Junior or Senior preferred but will consider underclass applicants with extensive experience) or graduate degree program and majoring in Pharmacy, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering, Biochemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, or a related scientific field.
Wet lab experience (pipetting, pH meter use, proper lab safety)
Basic coding knowledge (logic, loops, variable understanding and function understanding)
Excellent communication and presentation skills
Legal authorization to work in the United States, now and in the future. Please note that Vertex does not provide sponsorship for internships or entry level roles within this part of the organization.
You must be available to work full-time, 40 hours per week from May – August 2026

Responsibilities

Learning the day-to-day experiments of preclinical formulation experimentation
Running benchtop experiments using a wide variety of wet lab instruments including but not limited to pipettes, centrifuges, pH meters and analytical equipment
Learning liquid/solid handling software and hardware
Designing/coding liquid handling workflow