Senior Scientist II, Drug Screening

The Position

In your role as Senior Scientist II – Drug Screening within In Vitro Pharmacology team you will be responsible for development of cell-based assays for emerging targets and functional screening of drug candidates to guide candidate design and selection. You will be involved in projects focused primarily on small molecules and peptides as well as conjugates of these with other modalities, including biologics and oligonucleotides.

Your role will be to define and execute early screening strategies to ensure identification of hits with desired in vitro potency, efficacy and selectivity, and further optimization of structure-activity relationships. Your contribution will include evaluating and implementing new molecular and cellular in vitro pharmacology assay tools, techniques and protocols, recommending new solutions and enhancing our mechanistic biology, compound screening and automation capabilities.

You will contribute with your in vitro biology and molecular pharmacology subject matter expertise as a member of interdisciplinary project teams. You will be working together with researchers representing a variety of scientific disciplines key for early-stage drug discovery. Your results will be essential for driving project team activities and informing key decisions regarding project progression.

As a member of project teams, you will be responsible for driving projects as an individual contributor, with opportunities to serve as a project lead and/or subject‑specific coordinator. You will be relied upon to set your own direction and work independently with minimal guidance from your manager or other senior colleagues, including hands‑on responsibility for taking on challenging tasks where you will be expected to exhibit creativity and an ability to solve complex problems.

To achieve this, you will conduct relevant research of primary scientific literature, internal records, and other databases, as well as draw upon your internal and external scientific network to obtain knowledge, advice, and/or experimental protocols. You will contribute experimentally by exploring cell signaling mechanisms and coming up with new ways of quantifying those in cell‑based or cell‑derived systems, identifying and evaluating emerging assay technologies, and developing novel screening tools and methodologies.

You will be responsible for setting experiment timelines to meet project deliverables, including data generation, analysis, and reporting. You may be called upon to provide input and hands‑on training related to specific in vitro biology methods or technologies. Your tasks will include developing and optimizing protocols, providing significant input and driving screening strategies, and writing study plans, reports and other documents.

You will be responsible for developing, executing, and recording experimental procedures and ensuring that data is interpreted, processed, and stored in line with FAIR principles. Depending on the project objectives, you may be required to set up and/or manage collaborations with external partners, including CROs, Novo Nordisk partner companies and/or academic research groups. You will be required to present ideas and data to your department, research site, and/or global project teams.

Depending upon business needs or circumstances, you may be required to mentor or be shadowed by less experienced team members. In your daily work, you will collaborate closely with scientists within the Chemical Biology team, other teams across our growing US R&D Hub, and global project teams. Our work environment is dynamic and innovative and involves interactions with colleagues from research sites in Denmark, UK, and China, with an excellent opportunity to establish a strong global scientific network.

Internal relationships include working closely with researchers and scientific leadership within Greater Boston R&D Hub and across global research sites and other areas and functions within Novo Nordisk. You may represent department and/or project team in external research collaborations, both academic & industry‑based, when required. You will report to the head of In…