Senior Director, Medicinal Chemistry - Montai Health

What if… you could join an organization that creates, resources, and builds life sciences companies that invent breakthrough technologies in order to transform health care and sustainability?

Montai Health is a privately held, early-stage biotechnology company developing a platform for understanding and leveraging complex molecular interactions within organisms to solve global challenges in human health and sustainability. The company leverages a multidisciplinary approach that integrates tools ranging from machine learning and big data to multi-omics and high-throughput screening.

At Montai, we nurture a bold, spirited, and leading-edge culture dedicated to strengthening human health:

• We are one team with omnidirectional trust, empowered and accountable
• We are strong as individuals but stronger as a team and we are committed to excellence
• We have a sense of urgency and persistence, and we are crazily confident that we can make a difference
• We need to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and be rigorous and we recognize that failure is data
• We care for diversity in people, thought, personality, opinions, background and distinctiveness
• We have a sense of humor to help us manage through our strategic noise

Montai is seeking a highly motivated and innovative medicinal chemist to lead our Chemistry efforts as Senior Director, Medicinal Chemistry and play a vital role in the company’s efforts to validate novel discovery approaches based on AI/ML platform.

This individual will report to the Chief Scientific Officer and would be expected to utilize Montai’s AI-augmented novel drug discovery paradigm, to lead, motivate and develop a team of medicinal chemists (internal and external) through lead optimization, drug candidate identification and IND enabling assessment. The successful candidate will have deep experience in small molecule drug discovery and will drive the application of cutting-edge molecular, computational, and AI-augmented design approaches to enable quality drug candidates that can become transformative medicines for serious diseases.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide creative and innovative leadership of Medicinal Chemistry enabling the Company to convert strong biological hypotheses into transformative medicines
• Is responsible for the medicinal chemistry strategy to support Montai’s portfolio and individual projects
• Overseeing chemical library curation, acquisition, and management including synthetic and natural products for early investigation
• Work closely with the Montai Leadership Team and CRO’s to ensure that the medicinal chemistry group employs the highest standards and most advanced methodologies in drug discovery
• As a member of the Montai Leadership Team, contribute to the company’s strategy and portfolio prioritization
• Ensure effective interaction & communication between medicinal chemistry and other disciplines within Research and Development
• Lead the Medicinal Chemistry to ensure that it operates at the highest levels of scientific excellence, fostering collaborations with academia, biotech, and the rest of the company. Provide strategy for resourcing the medicinal chemistry group, with internal FTEs and CROs
• Construct and manage spending budgets and project resourcing for the Medicinal Chemistry efforts
• Lead and/or contribute to cross-functional goals within Montai

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD in Organic/Medicinal Chemistry with 10+ years of industry experience in medicinal chemistry such that a clear track record of success in Drug Discovery can be readily demonstrated.
• Have driven programs from early discovery to Development Candidate nomination and IND filing
• An extensive track record of presentations, publications, and patents
• A high degree of self-motivation, organization, communication, and presentation skills; high competence in solving complex problems, as well as the ability to navigate a fast-paced cross-functional and collaborative work environment
• A desire to be part of a highly innovative company aimed at transforming the lives of people with serious diseases, their families and society
• Demonstrated ability to successfully work in cross-functional teams with an emphasis on teamwork, collaboration, and communication
• Self-driven and demonstrated ability in working with a diverse team in a fast-entrepreneurial setting
• Ability to collaborate with and manage internal experts and external consultants.
• Drug discovery experience in multiple therapeutic areas and target classes

More About Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering has conceived of and created companies such as Moderna Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MRNA), Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Indigo Agriculture. Since its launch in 2000, Flagship has applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures. In 2021, Flagship Pioneering was ranked 12th globally on Fortune’s “Change the World” list, an annual ranking of companies that have made a positive social and environmental impact through activities that are part of their core business strategies.

Flagship Pioneering and our ecosystem companies are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Flagship Pioneering and its affiliated Flagship Lab companies (collectively, “FSP”) do not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to FSP or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Flagship Pioneering’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of FSP, and FSP will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.