What you'll own- Aim the engine. Own the prioritization of therapeutic areas, indications, and targets. Build the scientific roadmap that shapes what every other team works on.
- Direct disease modeling with the R&D team. Determine which diseases get modeled, what those models need to look like, how they need to perform, and what readouts prove they are working.
- Validate the science with the Platform team. As autonomous workcells come online, make sure the data makes biological sense and answers the right questions.
- Pick the targets with the AI/ML team. Decide which disease targets our foundation models get pointed at, and serve as the scientific lead on benchmarking and validating model output.
- Partner closely with Business Development. Identify collaboration and partnership opportunities, shape how the platform is positioned commercially, build BD decks and marketing materials, and prioritize the indications and targets with the strongest commercial leverage.
- Drive in-licensing of drug assets. Ensure strong platform-drug fit with proof points that turn the platform from a data engine into a drug discovery engine.
- Build the public scientific narrative. Lead the strategy behind patents, publications, white papers, blog posts, conference talks, and every external signal that establishes Parallel Bio as the scientific authority on human-first drug discovery.
- Decide our internal drug discovery programs. As the platform matures, choose which diseases we pursue ourselves.
Why this role is differentThis is a scientific strategy role, not a bench role. You're not running experiments or managing a lab team. You're deciding where the entire company points its experimental capacity. If you want to be at the bench, this isn't for you.
This is also explicitly a pre-IND role. You own the science from discovery through the IND-enabling package.
The platform can model almost any aspect of human immunology. That breadth is both the opportunity and the challenge: the hard part isn't what we can do, it's deciding what we should do. If you're energized by that kind of high-stakes prioritization, this is the role for you.
What we're looking forScientific Depth & Leadership
- An acknowledged leader in human immunology. Your career has been dedicated to understanding the human immune system in health and disease. You have a PhD in a related biomedical or bioengineering discipline, with credible experience across numerous sub-fields of immunology (e.g., cancer, autoimmunity, infectious disease, allergy) and broad knowledge across innate and adaptive immunity.
- A scientific communicator. You can write a paper, give a keynote, draft a patent strategy, and brief a CEO with equal fluency. You turn data into narrative and narrative into influence in the broader scientific community.
Market & Regulatory Expertise
- A pharma market expert. You know the major immunology drug discovery markets (immuno-oncology, vaccines, I&I, immunotoxicology) and the pipelines of every major player. You know which indications are heating up, which are crowded, and which are commoditized. You understand small molecule, biologic, and cell therapy drug discovery, and where platform-fit is sharpest.
- A pre-IND regulatory expert. You understand how the FDA operates at the discovery and translational stages: what data packages are best up to IND, what bridging studies look like, and how to present them.
Leadership Profile
- VP-caliber. Opinionated, decisive, comfortable with high-stakes judgment calls. You can say "we are not going to do that, here's why" with the same conviction as "we are doing this, here's why."
- Energized by the bet. You see human-first drug discovery as one of the most important shifts in pharmaceutical science in a generation, and you want to be the person calling the scientific shots.
Day one, week one, month one- Day one. Meet the leadership team of the company. Tour the lab. Get a full download on the disease models in flight, the pharma partnerships in motion, and the publication and patent pipeline as it stands today.
- Week one. Audit the scientific roadmap end-to-end. Pressure test our current therapeutic area focus against the markets, the regulatory environment, and where the platform is actually strongest. Map current conversations with external partners against our scientific priorities.
- Month one. Deliver the scientific strategy to the co-founders, covering where we aim the engine over the next 12 months: a prioritized therapeutic area and target roadmap, a public-science calendar (patents, papers, talks, white papers), a sharpened BD narrative, and a near-term in-licensing thesis. Then start running it.
Bonus points- Recognized voice in the field
- Comfort with data-heavy drug discovery platforms or computational biology
Knowledge of NAMs or other advanced in vitro systems
