Principal Scientist siRNA Design

Principal Scientist siRNA Design

Roche

Basel, Switzerland

The Position

As the siRNA Design Principal Scientist, you will play a key role in designing and optimizing therapeutic siRNA against various disease targets working from Target Assessment through Lead Optimization across different disease areas. You will integrate deep scientific expertise with high quality execution of discovery programs.

The Opportunity

• Therapeutic Design Strategy: Lead the drug design strategy of oligonucleotides with a strong focus on siRNAs, leveraging computational and empirical approaches, for both initial Proof of Concept on novel targets and full-scale lead optimization for clinical development.
• Guide projects holistically ensuring early design decisions align with late-stage clinical and manufacturing requirements.
• Utilize and invent new advanced chemical modification patterns and sequence selection strategies to optimize relevant pharmacological properties of siRNAs
• AI Collaboration: Work in close partnership with our AI Experts to develop, validate, and apply the suit of AI design solutions. You understand AI needs and will provide the "ground truth" biological data and domain expertise to sharpen our machine-learning approaches.
• Cross-Functional Alignment: Act as the RNAi subject matter expert in collaboration with project teams and disease experts.

Who You Are

• Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, or a related field with 5+ years of industry experience specifically in siRNA/RNAi therapeutic design.
• Deep understanding of the RNAi mechanism and profiling of siRNA therapeutics.
• Proven track record in applying chemical modification patterns of siRNA to enhance therapeutic profile.
• Familiarity with the interface of biology and data science; comfortable discussing parameters and data features with AI engineers; hands-on experience with command-line utilities and scripting languages for biological sequence analysis and data management.
• The "Team Player" Mindset: Ability to communicate complex nucleic acid chemistry to non-experts and integrate feedback from diverse stakeholders.
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to balance aggressive development timelines with meticulous attention to detail.
• Excellent communication skills, capable of translating complex scientific concepts into clear, actionable insights for diverse audiences.