Principal Scientist - Protein Discovery and Engineering

About the Department

Our Research & Development organization brings together the best minds in life science innovation. The teams located in facilities in Lexington, Watertown, Cambridge and Seattle reflect the full R&D continuum, from early research through late-stage clinical development. Here, we are building for the future, creating a distinct R&D community based on collaboration, partnerships, and cutting-edge research across multiple modalities and therapeutic areas. We recognize that improving human health starts here and that patients rely on us. Our R&D hub merges biotech speed and agility with large pharmaceutical company quality, resources, and stability, uniting the best of both worlds to develop new medicines for patients.

As part of the establishment of our R&D Hub in greater Boston, Novo Nordisk is growing its efforts within Chemical Biology. A cornerstone of this is an expansion of our capabilities in protein discovery and engineering to support the validation of drug targets and advance drug research programs that address unmet needs within a broad range of serious chronic diseases. Building on our success in delivering to patients' treatments for diabetes, obesity, and other chronic and rare diseases, we are rapidly growing our activities in our relentless pursuit of the next generation of novel therapies, ex-ploration of new targets across a range of new modalities.

In growing our presence in the greater Boston area via our R&D Hub, we seek to bring together the 100-year heritage and experience of Novo Nordisk with the unparalleled innovation eco-system found in Boston. You will join and help build a vibrant and science-focused team of researchers, where innovation is at the core. Chemical Biology sits within Small Molecule and Cross Modality Research (SM&CMR), which is a CVP area within Therapeutics Discovery and Accelerated Execution (TDAE). This is a key part of our Research and Early Development (R&ED) organization, which thrives on exploring new drug modalities, innovating screening and characterisation approaches, and enhancing delivery technologies to support projects across all therapeutic areas. We are an interdisciplinary team comprised of protein engineers, chemists, biologists, and assay development and screening specialists, and we are currently expanding our protein discovery and engineering team to help drive early research programs from idea to lead candidate.

We are based in newly established lab facilities in Lexington and co-located with target discovery and early drug research groups. As part of a team of leading scientists and innovators, you will bring your own ideas and collaborate with others to develop the next generation of medicines. It's ground-breaking work with the promise of improving the lives of millions of people with chronic diseases. If you want to make a difference, join us in pioneering research that can achieve a global impact.

The Position

In your role as Principal Scientist, you will be responsible for building up protein design and expression capabilities and various technology platforms for therapeutic protein discovery and engineering to support target validation and drug discovery projects. You will lead protein innovation, lab-scale protein production, and project coordination. You will contribute to maturing and advancing scientific ideas into projects within different therapeutic areas through experimental design and execution, ensuring data integrity and reproducibility, and communicating results to diverse project teams. 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. The working environment in R&ED 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.

Relationships

Internal relationships include project teams and research colleagues in the greater Boston area and at research sites elsewhere in the US, Denmark, China, and the UK. Communicates data externally when required. Reports to of the head of Chemical Biology. Individual Contributor: does not manage other employees or contingent workers.

Essential Functions

• Establishes protein discovery and engineering technology platforms, which may include mammalian, insect, e. coli, yeast, or other cell-based expression systems, as well as cell-free expression systems such as in vitro transcription and translation.
• Applies cutting edge techniques in laboratory automation to maximize throughput in protein discovery and engineering workflows.
• Drives projects both in key contributory roles, including technical coordination of project resources and project management.
• Works with full autonomy on extremely complex tasks and is capable of understanding the link between long-term overall business needs, therapy area goals, and modality strategies, and how these relate to short-term scientific goals and research project objectives.
• Is viewed internally and externally as a subject matter expert in protein discovery and engineering with ability to solve complex problems and contribute beyond your area of expertise.
• Provides expert-level guidance for project teams relating to experimental strategies, evaluation of new and emerging technologies, and the design of therapeutic proteins and related modalities.
• Proposes and oversees external collaborations and strategic partnerships, especially but not limited to the academic and biotech community in the greater Boston area, to further company goals related to therapeutic protein discovery and engineering.
• Acts as an ambassador for Novo Nordisk within the protein sciences field through engagement with the external scientific community in the form of filing patents to secure intellectual property rights, publication of research in high impact journals, and participation and presentation at scientific conferences.
• Mentors more junior scientists in the protein sciences field or in other areas of Chemical Biology to increase the team's overall scientific acumen and impact and create, develop junior talents, and create a strong team culture.
• Applies state-of-the-art principles of protein engineering to design and develop new drugs and enhance existing products.
• Provides subject matter expertise to drive the design and implementation of protein discovery and engineering processes from proof-of-concept to lead candidate.
• Analyzes highly complex technical data from experiments to draw conclusions, document results, and secure intellectual property rights.
• Evaluates new protein discovery and engineering technologies and provides expert-level recommendations on the potential for their internalization.
• Ensures data integrity so that the protein sciences area abides by FAIR data standards, furnishing project teams with the highest quality data and in a timely fashion to enable efficient decision-making, and enabling long-term data repurposing and machine learning ambitions.

Physical Requirements

0-10% overnight travel required

Qualifications

• Master's degree with 12+ years, or a PhD with 8+ years of relevant experience is required. A degree within biological, biochemical, or pharmacological sciences is preferred.
• Has a track record of playing key role in protein drug discovery efforts as evidenced through inventorship in protein composition of matter patents and publication in scientific literature.
• Possesses a deep understanding of cellular and protein biology as well as protein engineering core concepts.
• Extensive first-hand experience with protein design projects, including protein construct design, linker/tag design, regular protein and antibody frame-based protein design, and structural modelling techniques.
• Extensive first-hand experience in the execution of protein discovery projects in a wet-lab environment, including expression, isolation, purification, and characterization.
• Extensive first-hand experience establishing and executing high-throughput protein discovery platforms, which may include display technologies and/or automated parallel protein expression work-flows.
• Capable of handling and delegating highly complex tasks, balancing priorities, and adapting to changing organizational needs.
• Strong working knowledge of drug research process in a matrix organization from ideation to lead candidate selection, with ability to work closely with upstream and downstream functions to enable efficient project execution and identification of therapeutic protein lead candidates.
• Experience with industry standard laboratory equipment and instrumentation including automated liquid handling, chromatographic, and spectroscopic and spectrometric analytical instrumentation.
• Experience with industry standard scientific software including electronic record-keeping, entity registration, and inventory management tools as well as advanced data processing tools such as Prism, Python, and R.
• Familiarity with concepts in bioconjugation including common bio-orthogonal reactions and protocols for generating and characterizing protein bioconjugates.
• Familiarity with concepts and techniques in protein biophysical characterization.
• Familiarity with concepts and techniques in structural biology, including crystallography and cryo-EM.
• Familiarity with concepts and techniques in protein structure prediction, modelling, and computational design.
• Demonstrates excellent verbal and written communication skills.

We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants.

At Novo Nordisk we recognize that it is no longer good enough to aspire to be the best company in the world. We need to aspire to be the best company for the world and we know that this is only possible with talented employees with diverse perspectives, backgrounds and cultures. We are therefore committed to creating an inclusive culture that celebrates the diversity of our employees, the patients we serve and communities we operate in. Together, we're life changing.

Novo Nordisk is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by local, state or federal laws, rules or regulations.

If you are interested in applying to Novo Nordisk and need special assistance or an accommodation to apply, please call us at 1-855-411-5290. This contact is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.