About this role
About us
Edison Scientific builds and deploys AI scientist agents to accelerate science and the development of new medicines. We are an ambitious team run by scientists and engineers from leading institutions across biology, physics, chemistry, and AI.
Role
We're looking for a Medicinal Chemist to join our Forward Deployed team, embedded directly with pharma and biotech partners alongside our engineers and computational biologists. Your job: make sure our AI agents produce chemistry that's credible, synthesizable, and useful to real drug discovery teams.
You'll build benchmarks, evaluate agent outputs, and work with our medicinal chemist partners, to find where AI creates the most value in their design, synthesis, testing, and analysis cycles.
This is onsite, hands on work. You'll build relationships with discovery leaders, translate their chemistry thinking into agent behavior, and feed insights back to our AI team to improve how our platform reasons about molecular design.
Responsibilities
Improve AI agent performance to hit-to-lead chemistry tasks including SAR analysis, structure-based design, and synthetic feasibility analysis
Design benchmarks and acceptance criteria for chemistry focused agent workflows
Partner with medicinal chemists at client organizations to integrate AI agents into their discovery workflows
Serve as the chemistry expert on AI generated outputs, assessing structural soundness, flagging failure modes, and determining what's actionable
Collaborate daily with Forward Deployed Engineers and Computational Biologists on each account
Support engagement scoping, success metrics, and technical evaluation with our go-to-market team members.
Requirements
Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, or a related field and 5+ years of industry experience, ideally within a pharma or biotech sponsor organization
Track record in lead optimization campaigns from hit identification through candidate nomination
Deep knowledge of cheminformatics tools such as RDKit, Schrödinger, or MOE
Experience integrating ADMET and DMPK data into design decisions
Ability to travel domestically 20-40% of the time
Nice to Have
Proficiency in Python
Experience working across multiple therapeutic areas
High comfort with ambiguity and fast iteration
Why join us?
We're a fast-moving, mission-driven culture where smart people do their best work and actually enjoy doing it. We also offer full-time employees the following:
Competitive salary and equity
Full healthcare coverage; we pay 100% of premiums for you and your dependents
Support for growing families, including a yearly new parent stipend and fertility coverage through Carrot
Mental health support through Rula, our in-network therapist and psychiatrist network with fast availability
12 weeks of paid parental leave for maternity, paternity, and adoption
Pet care support with a yearly employer-funded stipend for your animal companions
Commuter benefits so you can pay for transit and parking with pre-tax dollars
401(k) company matching
$300 health and wellness benefit quarterly
Lunch is on us every day you're in the office, and dinner is on us when you're working late
Regular team off-sites and company events
Edison Scientific is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.