VP Head of AI

Job Title:

VP Head of AIJob Type: Permanent

Location:

Abingdon - UK, Alderley Park- UK or Verona, Italy Our Company Evotec is a leader in the discovery and development of novel small molecule drugs with operational sites in Europe and the US. The Company has built substantial drug discovery expertise and an industrialised platform that can drive new innovative small molecule compounds into the clinic. In addition, Evotec has built a deep internal knowledge base in the treatment of diseases related to neuroscience, pain, oncology, inflammation and metabolic diseases.

Leveraging these skills and expertise the Company intends to develop best-in-class differentiated therapeutics and deliver superior science-driven discovery alliances with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies

Purpose of the role The Vice President Head of AI leads the AI Accelerator, the single consolidated AI capability of Evotec's In Silico & AI function. The role is accountable for turning Evotec's proprietary discovery data and frontier models into predictive models, AI-generated therapeutic hypotheses and agentic workflows that every science unit consumes, making the Accelerator a force multiplier across the whole function rather than a competing science unit.

This is the senior technical voice for AI in Evotec's drug discovery. The post holder sets the AI vision and roadmap, and owns the build, buy and partner decisions for the AI stack. The role carries real decision rights and the latitude to shape a newly created unit, its groups and its technical standards from the ground up. The opportunity rests on an unusual data position: patient-derived, tissue-paired multi-omics at population scale, experimental ADMET and safety outcomes, and a federated discovery data estate that is difficult for competitors to replicate.

The post holder is expected to convert that position into models and reusable IP that compound across programmes, and to represent Evotec externally as a recognised technical leader in AI-powered drug discovery. Core accountabilities Own and lead the AI Accelerator as the single consolidated machine learning, deep learning and foundation-model capability serving every in silico unit, comprising the Machine Learning, Generative & Agentic AI, and Therapeutic Hypotheses groups Set the technical AI vision and multi-year roadmap for AI-powered drug discovery at Evotec, and translate the In Silico & AI strategy into a prioritised model and capability portfolio Deliver predictive models for molecular property, activity, ADMET and safety at a quality and scale that individual science units could not build or maintain alone Deliver AI-generated target and mechanism-of-action hypotheses that feed the Disease-to-Target and Therapeutics Design pipelines Own foundation-model orchestration and agentic workflows, grounding external frontier models in Evotec's proprietary outcomes data to create a genuine agentic integrator capability Operate as the shared capability that Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Therapeutics Design pull from Own build, buy and partner decisions for AI capability, including the selection and management of foundation-model providers, AI technology vendors, data partners and academic collaborations Establish model governance appropriate to a discovery environment: validation, benchmarking, reproducibility, data rights and responsible use, in partnership with IT&Data, Legal and QA Convert models, predictors and methods into reusable, protectable IP that compounds across projects and underpins model-training partnerships and asset licensing Act as a senior external voice for Evotec on AI in drug discovery through partner, analyst, conference and publication engagement, building the technical recognition on which AI-led alliance deals depend Build, lead and develop the AI Accelerator: attract and retain senior AI talent in a highly competitive market, develop the group leaders, and set the technical standards and ways of working for AI across the function Capability, Knowledge and

Experience:

Recognised technical authority in machine learning and deep learning applied to drug discovery or the life sciences, with the standing to set vision internally and represent Evotec externally Hands-on depth in several of the following: molecular property and ADMET or toxicity prediction, generative and structure-based molecular design, geometric deep learning and graph neural networks, protein and sequence models, and representation…