Are you ready to own the analysis, predictive modeling and interpretation of large-scale perturbation single-cell transcriptomic screens, turning high-dimensional, complex gene expression state changes into clear biological conclusions that drive therapeutic decisions in cardio-renal-metabolic disease?
Large-scale transcriptomic data is at the heart of Gordian's discovery efforts, and the company will succeed based on our ability to accurately predict physiological changes in disease using single cell gene expression as a readout. In this role, you'll help ensure our screening and validation decisions are grounded in rigorous, transparent and state-of-the-art analyses, enabling us to confidently prioritize the best targets and interventions.
The Role:
Your primary mission as the VP of Discovery Biology is to captain and pace our target discovery engines across multiple therapeutic areas, treating early drug discovery as a team race to beat conventional industry timelines. Reporting directly to the CSO, you will act as a core contributor to our executive therapeutic portfolio strategy, translating corporate milestones into immediate platform output and capability goals. You will lead a talented team of disease biology leads and functional platform heads, adjudicating portfolio resource conflicts using rigorous framework metrics to rapidly and systematically turn our platform into a highly productive pipeline of drug programs.
In your first month, you will absorb our overarching company strategy, 5-year pipeline plan, and program strategic blueprints. You will establish rapport with the three disease biology leads and two functional platform leads that run our discovery biology, tour every reporting team to understand their operations, and construct a comprehensive 6-month operational overview of goals, technical milestones, and responsibilities across target discovery workflows.
Within two months, you will assume active management of your five senior direct reports, establishing structured weekly coordination frameworks and directly leading program management for our flagship internal metabolic disease program. You will evaluate and establish clear strategies for how we track our science globally to upgrade our core data workflows, while helping disease leads formalize and communicate major program decisions across all functional groups.
Within three months, you will take full responsibility for all operational decisions, alignment, and velocity adjustments within and across our target discovery programs. To push our science forward faster, you will propose three concrete improvements to the structural productivity of the organization, while leveraging our platform capabilities to contribute meaningfully to corporate strategy alongside executive leadership.
At the six-month mark and beyond, you will have managed the exploration of hundreds of screening hits and physiological confirmation of dozens of high-confidence candidates now ready for Chemistry assessment. You will optimize the discovery engine to be 20%+ more efficient in target throughput per unit time, implement structural changes to boost target nomination quality and outpace industry standards, and ensure that experimental data records are seamlessly queryable and fully compliant with global pharmaceutical data-sharing partnerships.
And You:
You have a track record of success in high-agency work, consistently creating momentum rather than waiting for direction.
You want to do your best work alongside exceptional teammates and are energized by environments where people push each other to think more clearly, work at a higher standard, and grow into better versions of themselves.
You truly want to play a key role in an early-stage startup screening new targets for intractable diseases of aging: A fast-paced environment full of both uncertainty and new challenges, demanding relentless resourcefulness.
You possess broad exposure directing target discovery efforts across two or more therapeutic indications, moving fluidly from in vivo disease physiology and cell biology through computational approaches. Crucially, you have governed the successful transition of multiple novel assets from initial discovery programs into formal drug discovery pipelines, thinking critically about every dimension of new targets' potential.
You are an exceptional manager of managers, having directly led three or more distinct teams managers reporting to you. You are energized by cultivating scientific talent, a commitment evidenced by the clear growth in capacity of your previous teams and a history of excellent upward reviews from those you have mentored.
You bring a strong conceptual and experiential understanding of modern genomic platforms, including single-cell transcriptomics, RNA sequencing, and pooled perturbation screens. You view target discovery as system to optimize and are eager to deploy advanced analytical and tracking insights to scale our screening engine's throughput and predictive validity.
Ideally, your background includes domain expertise in cardiometabolic or adjacent complex disease indications and sophisticated disease modeling, and/or a robust understanding of small molecule drug discovery and development paradigms, allowing you to seamlessly translate early discovery hits into development-ready candidates.
The Details:
Gordian aims to provide everything you need to thrive. Beyond or community and science, you'll have enough equity to be a true stakeholder in the company, competitive salary, full health/dental/vision/life insurance, 401k with match, onsite lunch paid for 3 days a week, an onsite gym, whatever vacation you need to be at your peak, remote work flexibility, and access to world-class mentors and advisors to support your professional growth. Our building is in the heart of the biotech capital of South San Francisco.
The pay range for this role is:
230,000 - 300,000 USD per year (South San Francisco)
