Senior Scientist - Protein Chemistry

The businesses of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany•Billerica, MA

11h

About The Position

EMD Serono in Billerica, MA is seeking a Senior Scientist – Protein Chemistry to add to their Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Group (DDTech). United As One for Patients, our purpose in Healthcare is to help create, improve and prolong lives. We develop medicines, intelligent devices and innovative technologies in therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Neurology and Fertility. Our teams work together across 6 continents with passion and relentless curiosity in order to help patients at every stage of life. Joining our Healthcare team is becoming part of a diverse, inclusive and flexible working culture, presenting great opportunities for personal development and career advancement across the globe. This role does not offer sponsorship for work authorization. External applicants must be eligible to work in the US.

Requirements

PhD in Biochemistry, Protein Chemistry, Computational Biology, Computer Science or other Science field
3+ years of industry experience in sequence and structure-based protein design
Excellent communication and problem-solving skills
Ability to work independently

Nice To Haves

Good understanding of conjugation challenges like aggregation, charge effects, linker optimization and contribute to SAR Studies
Familiarity with High throughput screening, AI/ML for antibody design
Demonstrated experience with the state-of-the-art suite of tools for protein design and machine learning approaches (AlphaFold, ESM, ProteinMPNN, RF-Diffusion, Rosetta, etc.)
Experience in leading and managing projects to ensure protein design relevant objectives are met on time and in high quality
Experience with bispecific and multi-specific antibody platforms

Responsibilities

Perform protein/antibody expression, modification, purification, and characterization
Design and engineer antibodies (vis Cysteine or Lysine engineering, enzymatic tagging or other site-specific strategies) to enable efficient conjugation
Support SAR and collaborate closely with cross functional teams (Antibody Discovery, Oligonucleotide Chemistry, Analytical and Biology teams)
Utilize knowledge of relevant assays - Binding (i.e. ELISA, SPR, BLI, flow cytometry), cell based (i.e. ADCC, CDC, proliferation) and biophysical characterization (i.e. stability, aggregation)