Scientific Software Developer

at  Astex Pharmaceuticals

3-YEAR FIXED-TERM CONTRACT

Astex Pharmaceuticals is a world leader in innovative drug discovery and development. The company has successfully applied its proprietary Fragment-Based Drug Discovery platform to generate multiple new drug candidates that are progressing in clinical development. Successful collaborations have led to three launched oncology drugs (Kisqali® partnered with Novartis, Balversa® partnered with Janssen and Truqap™ partnered with AstraZeneca). Astex continues to grow and focuses on Neurological Disorders and Oncology.

DESIRABLE SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Good knowledge of Python and/or Javascript
• Software development experience in industry or an academic setting
• Working knowledge of relational databases, especially within a chemical context
• Familiarity with git, CI and testing
• Excellent team working, written and verbal communication skills
• Familiarity with cheminformatics (including toolkits such as RDKit) and/or organic chemistry would be an advantage

THE ROLE

Astex has a strong history in developing web-based applications to support its internal fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) platform and carrying out cutting edge research in this area. This role will involve developing full-stack web applications for Structure-Based Drug Design (SBDD) and cheminformatics. You will be working in a team of developers, computational scientists and machine learning experts, collaborating with experimental scientists from across the organisation. You will work closely with users to understand their needs and deliver software to support their research.
Our applications typically use flask (python) and oracle at the back end, with the front end built with react or another JS/TS framework, but a good understanding of web fundamentals is more important than knowledge of any particular stack. There are also opportunities to work with other technologies such as graph databases (Neo4j), WebGL, instrumentation robotics and machine learning methods. You will support scientists with their emerging project needs and will help to maintain and extend our existing code base.
The ideal candidate will be a computer scientist with experience of working in a chemistry- and/or structural-biology-related discipline, or a computational chemist/biologist with an aptitude for software development.

PRINCIPAL RESPONSIBILITIES

• Design, develop and maintain bespoke web applications to support drug discovery programs
• Collaborate with other developers and scientists to support their project needs
• Contribute to internal software development infrastructure