Applications Scientist, Structural Biology

High Q Technologies builds FATHOM, a quantum-enabled electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) platform that measures which conformational states a protein populates in solution, and in what proportions. Structure prediction, cryo-EM and crystallography tell you what a protein can look like. FATHOM tells you how often it looks that way, and how a drug candidate changes the balance.

We work with AI drug discovery companies, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and academic laboratories. Most of that work runs as scientific projects: our team designs and runs the experiment that answers a partner's question about their own target. Some partners also install a FATHOM system in their own laboratory.

Our patented technology applies microwave quantum optics, developed from experimental quantum computing research in collaboration with Professor David Cory's group at the University of Waterloo, to make EPR far more sensitive. High Q is backed by Quantum Valley Investments and Black Berry co‑founders Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin. The company is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario.

We are hiring an Applications Scientist with a structural biology background to be the scientific partner our customers work with, from the first conversation about their target to the result they act on. You do not need EPR experience. You need to understand proteins as moving, multi‑state molecules, and to learn quickly how a distance measurement between two labelled sites can show which states are present and in what proportions.

Most of your time will go to AI drug discovery companies and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies working with us on measurement projects and longer research partnerships. Their questions usually fall into two kinds:

• Mechanism. How does a compound change the states a target populates? Does a designed molecule do what it was designed to do?
• Ground truth. How well do the state populations a computational model predicts match what the protein actually does in solution?

You will also support customers who operate a FATHOM system in their own laboratory, helping them design experiments and interpret results.

Reports to: Principal Scientist

Location: Waterloo, Ontario

Design the experiment with the customer

• Work with a partner's structural, computational and medicinal chemistry scientists to turn their question into an experiment that can answer it: which sites to label, which constructs and conditions, which controls, and what a result would and would not show.
• Read a partner's published and disclosed work to find the question their programme actually holds and frame our proposal around it.
• With computational and machine learning teams, define how measured state populations will be compared with model predictions, and what a useful validation set looks like.

Deliver projects

• Plan and coordinate sample supply. Some partners provide their own protein; others have no wet laboratory, so you will specify constructs, cysteine mutants and labelling strategy, and manage work with contract protein production partners.
• Work with our EPR scientists to plan and run measurements, then analyse and interpret the resulting distance distributions in light of the available structures and models.
• Present results to partner teams in their own terms, including what the data support, what they do not, and what to measure next.
• Capture what each project leaves behind (constructs, reagents, protocols, experimental designs) so the next project on a similar target starts further ahead.

Support system customers

• Help customers who own a FATHOM system design experiments, prepare samples and interpret results.
• Contribute to training,…