Senior Scientist, Cheminformatics

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at https://www.jnj.com

Job Function:

Job Sub Function:

Job Category:

All Job Posting Locations:

Job Description:

We are seeking a passionate and dedicated Senior Scientist, Cheminformatics to join our cutting-edge in silico discovery team.

This position offers an exciting opportunity to build and advance state-of-the-art informatics capabilities, working closely with medicinal chemists and multidisciplinary project teams. If you have a strong foundation in cheminformatics, a passion for coding, and a keen interest in drug discovery, we want to hear from you!

Caring for the world, one person at a time has inspired and united the people of Johnson & Johnson for over 125 years. We embrace research and science -- bringing innovative ideas, products and services to advance the health and well-being of people. Employees of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies work with partners in health care to touch the lives of over a billion people every day, throughout the world!

Thriving on a diverse company culture, celebrating the uniqueness of our employees and committed to inclusion. Proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. And our culture is interconnected by the shared values of Our Credo. It’s a culture that celebrates diversity and diverse perspectives. It helps employees achieve an effective mix between work and home life and supports their efforts to have a positive impact on their communities.

Key Responsibilities

• Advance drug discovery projects by implementing industry-leading cheminformatics, data science, and machine learning approaches, thereby strengthening data-driven decision-making
• Design, build and optimize informatics workflows working closely together with our IT team to go all the way from ideation to production
• Build user-friendly GUIs and dashboards to facilitate data exploration and presentation
• Integrate and mine internal and external heterogenous data sources in the support of pre-portfolio projects
• Keep up with ever growing on-demand chemical spaces by implementing and/or applying algorithms for virtual screening and chemical space comparisons
• Implement ML models for property prediction, clustering, and data analysis of small molecules
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate data insights into actionable decisions in drug discovery
• Stay up to date with the latest developments in cheminformatics, machine learning, and computational chemistry

Required skills

• PhD in Computational Chemistry, Cheminformatics, Bioinformatics, or a related field
• Good knowledge of organic and/or medicinal chemistry
• Solid understanding of structure- and ligand-based SAR analysis
• Knowledge of small molecule descriptors, fingerprints, and related cheminformatics concepts
• Hands-on experience with public data sources such as ChEMBL, Uniprot, ProteinAtlas, and GeneOntology
• First-hand experience with state-of-the-art cheminformatics techniques, e.g. FWA, MMP, enumeration and generative tools (CrEM, ReInvent)
• Strong coding skills (preferably python)
• Experience with cheminformatics software and libraries (e.g., RDKit, OpenEye toolkits)
• Familiarity with high-performance computing (HPC) environments and cloud computing platforms
• Enthusiasm for drug discovery and working within multi-disciplinary project teams
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently and collaboratively

Preferred Skills

• Experience in building GUIs or interactive dashboards (e.g., Streamlit, Shiny, Spotfire)
• Experience with statistical and/or ML techniques for property predictions
• Solid understanding of generative design
• Familiarity with molecular modeling software (Schroedinger, MOE, Cresset) and end-user design tools (e.g., LiveDesign)
• Experience in navigating large chemical spaces for virtual screening

Johnson & Johnson is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.