FL89: Head of Structural & Computational Biology

Company Summary:

FL89, Inc. is a privately held early-stage company investigating secreted protein function and regulation in human physiology by combining a newly developed high throughput -omics platform with cutting edge cellular biology approaches and machine learning. Our mission is to leverage natural evolution to understand drivers and early biomarkers in the secretome which underlie chronic disease and develop next generation of therapeutics with increased potency & specificity.

One of FL89’s founding principles is to build an inclusive and exciting working environment that fosters personal and professional growth by ensuring that all team members contribute to and feel ownership of our scientific vision.

FL89 was founded by Flagship Pioneering, an innovation enterprise dedicated to originating and developing first-in-category life sciences companies. Flagship Pioneering has conceived of and created companies such as Moderna Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MRNA), Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Indigo Agriculture. Since its launch in 2000, Flagship has applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures. In 2021, Flagship Pioneering was ranked 12th globally on Fortune’s “Change the World” list, an annual ranking of companies that have made a positive social and environmental impact through activities that are part of their core business strategies.

Position Summary:

We are seeking a Head of Structural and Computational biology to lead the integration of structure and sequence information to enable FL89’s platform discovery and development research. The successful candidate will build a team of structural chemists, machine learning scientists, bioinformaticians and software engineers to to develop novel generative design capabilities to disruptively transform biotherapeutics drug discovery as well as traditional analytics.

The ideal candidate will have a track record of successfully leading teams to invent and deploy sophisticated tools in high-volume, high-speed contexts, particularly as pertains to the interplay between protein sequence, structure, and high-dimensional NGS assays. We are seeking candidates with an entrepreneurial mindset who can lead with a hands-on approach in developing, learning and applying computational models to better understand and describe protein structure-function rules that impact human health. The candidate will lead the design and implement novel approaches to modeling protein structure, develop structural alignment tools, assign functional similarities and work with the experimental teams to build a reiterative learning loop to identify, classify, and validate novel secreted proteins and protein functions. An ideal candidate will pride themselves on their ability to craft scientifically logical stories out of complex structural data, develop AI/ML tools to describe key structural definitions that drive biological mechanisms, and leverage discoveries into viable biomarker or therapeutic targets.

An essential element of the role will be the ability to collaborate closely with the leadership team and other R&D leaders while guiding the computational team to adapt to, integrate, and drive new laboratory and computational experimentation in keeping with the company’s objectives. The position will provide a unique opportunity to play a foundational role in the development of FL89’s preclinical platform.

Key Responsibilities:

• Be part of the leadership team to develop and influence scientific strategy.
• Set team goals and priorities. Recruit and mentor exceptional computational scientists to meet said goals
• Work closely with program heads to establish data infrastructure and analytical workflows to digitalize the business to a best-in-class organization
• Work with computational and experimental scientists to establish data management practices and SOPs to improve efficiency
• Integrate external tools and develop in-house methods to support company objectives
• Communicate insights and conclusions to the scientific leadership and executive management
• Lead development and application of structural chemistry, bioinformatic, computational biology, data pipelines and machine learning tools to generate insights and hypotheses from high-dimensional molecular datasets, with an initial focus on in silico modeling of protein structures-function relationships.
• Lead application and development of novel ML models of protein-protein/receptor-ligand interactions
• Develop novel & innovative approaches to structure conservation analysis
• Creative synthesis of concepts to push innovative ideas and solutions
• Monitor and evaluate new and emerging technologies and models and identify opportunities for collaboration within Flagship Pioneering companies, academia, and third parties
• Develop relationships with Flagship Pioneering’s broader science community and manage external consultants as needed.

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD in computational biology, data sciences (or equivalent)
• 8+ years in the biotech industry including 4+ years in people management
• Experience in computational structural biology or a related field such as computational evolutionary biology, or protein engineering
• Demonstrated industry experience or academic achievement, as evidenced by publications in high impact journals, conference proceedings, or widely used codebase
• Proficiency with bioinformatics tools in the protein space (e.g. AlphaFold, Rosetta, etc.)
• Strong familiarity with topics of protein and macromolecular structures and interactions with other proteins
• Experience in developing & deploying machine learning platforms using modern Python frameworks for deep learning (e.g. PyTorch)
• Experience with cloud environments such as AWS
• Knowledge of best practices in software engineering for reproducibility and data management skills
• Ability to work in and adapt to a fast-paced environment

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with protein co-evolution analysis
• Experience with NGS and bioinformatics tools

Flagship Pioneering and our ecosystem companies are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Flagship Pioneering and its affiliated Flagship Lab companies (collectively, “FSP”) do not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to FSP or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Flagship Pioneering’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of FSP, and FSP will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.