Senior Scientist

This role fills a global and critical vaccine research and development role for the Global Antigen Design/ Research and Development / Sanofi Vaccines global. The role is responsible for developing and applying novel methods to address state‑of‑the‑art problems in computational structural biology and requires a mastery of the fundamentals in protein structures, biophysics, and thermodynamics. The role requires a PhD in computational structural biology and have an advanced understanding and practical experience with developing and applying computational protein design tools for protein stabilization and antibody epitope prediction.

In addition, S/he will have advanced experience in applying computational tools to calculate antibody‑antigen binding affinity, as well as simulation tools to probe protein conformational changes. It is a major plus if the applicant also has hands‑on laboratory experience to better interface between computational and experimental sciences.

This role reports directly to Global Head of Computational Antigen Design

90% General Job Duty – Computational Structural Biology and Machine Learning

• Develop, automate, and apply computational protein design pipeline to support vaccine design
• Develop and apply computational tools to predict broadly neutralizing epitope
• Apply computational/machine tools to model antigens of interest
• Designs and performs computational experiments with a “fail fast” spirit and considers the outlier result to be the most interesting result
• Explores future directions of Computational Structural Biology/Machine Learning and keeps abreast of the latest developments
• Acts as a subject matter expert in computational structural biology
• Produces high‑quality analyses and codebases that extend the capabilities and impact of the team as a whole
• Generates IP and participates in the drafting of patent filings

10% General Job Duty – Internal and External Networking

• Participates in relevant Project Teams and proactively maintain an open interface and communication channel with relevant areas of the company.
• Ensures transparent and cooperative liaison with other positions around innovation and artificial intelligence/big data within the wider Sanofi Group.
• Ensures efficient and agile communication of key information, process and workflow operational element in various circumstances
• Leads by Influence to mentor diverse staff in the interpretation and generation of novel vaccine candidates performance data
• Develops and maintains an international network of experts in computational structural biology / machine learning, key science, technology and innovation areas, including outside the typical vaccine industry.
• Representations and interventions at the international/community level on relevant structural biology/machine learning matters. Presents at conferences.

This position is key for achieving the mission of the Computational Antigen Design: pioneering, testing and implementing innovative cutting‑edge biological science and novel Structural Biology/Machine Learning technology solutions and concepts towards antigen design.

The major challenges related to the role are:

• The complexity and variety of the role: ability to switch smoothly between different scientific and operational disciplines and requirements; being able to marry deep scientific research and fast exploratory mindset with proper documentation.
• Execute on a variety of timescales and merge results from many sub‑disciplines and techniques to assess and design
• The need to quickly transform an idea into an experiment and learn from the result to decide on the next step, which might be to kill the idea.
• An unusually strong combination of biological science knowledge, structural biology, systems biology, and computer science knowledge.
• Tact, diplomacy, people skills, and excellent networking and communication (both oral and written) skills in general are important.

• Broad-based scientific training (Ph.D. Bio Engineering, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology or Master’s degree with equivalent experience.
• Experience in computational protein design is required; experience in antigen…