Biological Data Scientist

Exscientia is an AI-driven pharmatech company committed to discovering, designing and developing the best possible drugs in the fastest and most effective manner. Exscientia developed the first-ever functional precision oncology platform to successfully guide treatment selection and improve patient outcomes in a prospective interventional clinical study, as well as to progress AI-designed small molecules into the clinical setting.

Our pipeline demonstrates our ability to rapidly translate scientific concepts into precision-designed therapeutic candidates, with more than 25 projects underway. By designing better drugs, faster, we believe the best ideas of science can rapidly become the best medicines for patients.

We’re seeking a Biological Data Scientist to contribute to our mission to deliver better medicines, faster, to people around the world. The journey towards a new therapy often begins with a target – your analyses of biological data will generate novel insights into disease biology, and targets that you identify may become the focus of new therapies against viruses with pandemic potential, cancer or autoimmune diseases. As a Biological Data Scientist in the Target Analysis Team, you will play an integral role in developing our capabilities. You will initially focus on supporting our antivirals program, but will also impact projects in other therapeutic areas. You will team your data science skills with biological knowledge to develop tools and datasets that drive development of the next generation of therapies.

As the Biological Data Scientist you will have the opportunity to:

• Work closely with the antivirals team to guide target identification and selection, focusing initially on our pandemic preparedness program around coronaviruses, paramyxoviruses and influenza.
• Conduct analyses and prototype novel tools that will be used by data scientists and biologists to understand disease biology in the fields of virology, oncology and autoimmune diseases.
• Work closely with a multi- disciplinary team of biologists, data scientists, machine learning experts, and strategists to drive target analysis
• Develop your skills as a data scientist by immersing yourself in a modern tech-driven organisation of mission-focussed scientists
• Interact directly with partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to deliver new medicines

Requirements

• Substantial experience using R and/or Python to answer biological questions in an academic or industrial research setting
• Solid understanding of viral biology, experience of working with human and/or virological “-omics” data and/or data from CRISPR/RNAi based screens
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate complex ideas into understandable insights for non-specialists both verbally and using data visualisation/dashboards
• Knowledge of public domain resources such as UniProt, Ensembl, and PubMed and other specialist resources such as TCGA, OpenTargets, GWAS catalogue, ViPR and ORCS.
• PhD degree or equivalent experience in bioinformatics, virology, biology, structural biology, computer science, or an adjacent quantitative data science field.

What would be great to have?

• Experience of target analysis in an industrial drug discovery setting
• Experience of version control (e.g., git) and task management systems (e.g., Jira)
• Experience in building or using graph databases for data storage and/or analysis
• Experience working within a cloud (e.g., AWS) or HPC environment

Benefits

• Work together to make a positive contribution to patients by revolutionising the pharmaceutical industry through AI-driven discovery.
• We will work with you to kick-start or further grow your career – from funding for professional development and conference attendance, to the opportunity to acquire valuable skills, work on problems that matter, and learn from world-class technological and scientific leaders.
• Opportunity to join an inclusive, collaborative and intellectually stimulating culture
• We will work with you to provide a highly competitive compensation as we continue to grow and thrive.
• Our team’s health and well-being is important to us - we offer a generous holiday allowance, provide flexible working and remote working to encourage all of our team to manage their own work, time and life along with wellbeing and mindfulness support.
• When you are in the office, you will have access to a kitchen stocked with an endless supply of food for all employees along with access plenty of break out areas so you can get to know the people you are working with. Some of the best ideas start with a coffee break!
• Hear from our team about why they enjoy working here