Head of External Drug Discovery Operations
AI-first drug design and development company building a unified drug-design engine to advance new medicines.
Funding history
Investors
About Isomorphic Labs
Isomorphic Labs uses predictive and generative AI models, computational biology, and drug-design expertise to develop therapeutics across partnered and internal programs.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will lead external drug discovery and preclinical laboratory operations, developing scalable CRO processes that support high-quality, structured data generation. You will set partner strategy and governance, manage budgets and contracts, align external capacity with project needs, evaluate new experimental platforms, and recruit and develop operational leaders.
Requirements
- Ph.D. or Master’s degree in Chemistry, Biology, Pharmacology, or a related life sciences discipline
- Substantial biopharma R&D leadership experience in external research, discovery CRO management, or externalised discovery programmes
- Working knowledge of medicinal and synthetic chemistry, in vitro screening, in vivo pharmacology, and ADMET workflows
- Experience implementing structured data collection with external vendors, including automated QC, data curation, and machine-readable transfers
- Experience deploying productivity tools and automated workflow systems for external research operations
- Commercial and financial experience managing multi-million-pound discovery budgets and negotiating MSAs and SOWs
- Experience leading teams and influencing stakeholders in a matrix organisation
- Familiarity with small molecules and complex or emerging modalities
- Practical experience structuring chemical and biological data for machine learning workflows and automated DMTA cycles
- Exposure to or interest in agentic AI for external research operations
- Experience with biologics workflows
Responsibilities
- Lead CRO operational strategy and external drug discovery and preclinical operations
- Drive experimental throughput, data quality control, and turnaround times
- Establish data-generation standards with external partners, including schemas, metadata, machine-readable formats, and pipeline integration
- Develop vendor selection criteria, governance tiers, and performance KPIs
- Build and manage strategic CRO relationships and resolve scientific or operational bottlenecks
- Align external capacity and work packages with project milestones and resourcing needs
- Evaluate and onboard emerging CRO capabilities and experimental platforms
- Manage the external discovery budget, vendor agreements, SOWs, and invoice reconciliation
- Recruit, lead, mentor, and develop CRO Scientific Leads, Operations Managers, and Compound Management professionals