Vice President, Early Discovery Chemistry

The Opportunity:

The Vice President, Early Discovery Chemistry will report to the Senior Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry and Screening Platform Technologies and serve as the scientific and organizational leader for Revolution Medicines' Early Discovery Chemistry organization. The role will lead multidisciplinary teams spanning Early Discovery Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, library sciences, and enabling discovery technologies to drive the identification of novel chemical matter for Revolution Medicines' oncology pipeline.

This executive will define and execute the strategy for discovering high-value chemical matter against challenging targets by integrating innovative chemistry, computational design, AI/ML, automation, and modern screening technologies. The organization will expand accessible chemical space, accelerating hit identification, and delivering differentiated chemical matter into Medicinal Chemistry for lead optimization.

The successful candidate will establish Early Discovery Chemistry as a center of scientific excellence that continuously advances technologies, capabilities, and workflows to improve the speed, quality, and probability of success of drug discovery across the Revolution Medicines portfolio.

Key responsibilities include driving innovation and advancing screening and synthesis technologies, building capabilities that expand diversity of the chemical space and accelerate the identification of high-value starting points and tools for drug discovery. The VP will foster close collaboration across biology, computational sciences, and downstream medicinal chemistry teams to ensure seamless progression from early discovery into lead optimization and contribute to advancing transformative science by demonstrating:

• Vision, strategy, leadership: Collaborate with Research leadership to develop a long-term strategy for portfolio expansion through discovery of inhibitors of frontier oncology targets. Partner with biology and digital drug discovery to harness data analytics at all stages of discovery, and particularly. Provide vision,  leadership and drive cross-functional alignment to support a dynamic portfolio of discovery and development stage projects.

• Innovation: Provide scientific leadership for innovation across early discovery and medicinal chemistry, leveraging advances in AI/ML, data-informed approaches to accelerate DMTA cycles, computational design, data analysis, automation, innovative synthesis and screening approaches, and data science to accelerate discovery and expand access to novel chemical space. Foster a culture of creativity, scientific excellence.

• Management excellence: Manage a high-performing group with multiple functions. Sustain productivity through strategic hiring, mentoring, and support for individual career growth. Be accountable for an annual budget. 

• Cross-functional collaboration: Position the Early Discovery Chemistry function as a bridge across Research, enabling bench-to-bedside insights. Partner with Medicinal Chemisry, Structural and Molecular Sciences, Digital Drug Discovery, Systems Biology, and Translational Research to identify molecular determinants of response, resistance, and target vulnerability and to inform discovery priorities.

Required Skills, Experience, and Education:

• Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, or related discipline.

• 15+ years of industrial drug discovery experience with significant leadership responsibility in Early Discovery or Medicinal Chemistry.

• Demonstrated success leading programs from target concept through hit identification and into lead optimization.

• Hit identification; Library design and chemical diversity; Fragment-based drug discovery; Screening technologies; Computationally enabled molecular design.

• Building and leading multidisciplinary scientific organizations.

• Strong strategic leadership experience including organizational design, budgeting, hiring, and talent development.

• Outstanding communication skills with demonstrated ability to influence senior leadership and cross-functional teams.

• Ability to work in a high-energy, fast-paced, rapidly evolving and scaling company, operating in a highly competitive field.

• Demonstrated ability to build, lead, and foster a collaborative culture on interdisciplinary teams.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience discovering drugs against challenging oncology targets.

• Experience with covalent inhibitors, molecular glues, targeted protein degradation, or ADC payload discovery.

• Experience leading external collaborations and technology partnerships.

• Record of scientific publications, patents, and industry recognition.

• Experience advancing multiple discovery programs from target identification through candidate nomination. 

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