Principal Scientist: Medicinal Chemistry
UCB – Inspired by patients. Driven by science.
Help us transform patients’ lives.

About UCB

At UCB, we put our heart, soul and skills into making a difference for people living with severe diseases. We look to transform patients’ lives by pushing the boundaries of what is possible. With us, our talent makes the most of who they are, unlocking innovation and setting new standards for patients.

Everything we do starts with a simple question: “How will this make a difference to the lives of people living with severe diseases?” And to find the answers, we connect globally with patients and their families living with the physical and social burdens of severe disease. These connections give us new perspectives, drive our innovation, and offer a hope for a new generation of therapies that will help to transform lives.

To strengthen our Medicinal Chemistry Group, we are looking to fill the position of: Principal Scientist.

What We Offer
An opportunity to:

• Lead a medicinal chemistry team to deliver critical decision-making project milestones with a sense of urgency, from target validation to pre-clinic candidate selection and beyond.
• Establish and build internal and external presence and credibility as a recognised expert in medicinal chemistry.
• Establish a high level of innovation utilising your current knowledge of science and technology to drive drug discovery effectiveness.  
• Represent your functional team and influence the management for scientific and operational strategy, resource use and project execution.
• Offer constructive challenge and champion continuous improvement of the area operation to enable an effective drug discovery process.

About the Role
You will be responsible for:

• Effectively managing internal/external resources to ensure high performance, defining medicinal chemistry project strategy and integrating Medchem, CADD, in vitro/in vivo DMPK, pharmacology and tox to deliver project milestones
• Building medicinal chemistry functional excellence and drug discovery capabilities, foster innovation, forge strong cross-functional collaborations.
• Strong people leadership with strong communication skills in motivating the frontline scientists and in developing/retaining top talent.
• Acting as an ambassador for UCB in the broad scientific community. 

About You
You should have:

• A recognised expert in medicinal chemistry with a track record of strong scientific leadership in delivery of clinic candidates of high scientific quality, with a sense of urgency, and with a strong record of publications, patents and presentations.
• Strong creative problem-solving skills sound scientific judgement and efficient medicinal chemistry program execution ability.
• A relevant degree (i.e. in Organic Chemistry) coupled with appropriate industrial experience. Preferably gained international recognition in medicinal chemistry, achieved by the application of science of the highest quality. ­­­
• Sound knowledge of computational chemistry, cheminformatics and DMPK with a good understanding of novel enabling technologies and ways of working to advance medicinal chemistry discipline towards high productivity.

UCB – The Facts
With more than 7500 employees in approximately 40 countries, we are a global biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Brussels, Belgium which invests more than 25% of revenue in cutting-edge scientific research to meet unmet patient needs. A few other reasons that make UCB an amazing place to work:

• Promising pipeline that includes several novel molecules and no major patent expiration in the next decade;
• About 25% of 2016 revenue reinvested into Research & Development
• 2016 Key Financials: €4.2 billion global revenue Specialties: Neurology, Immunology