Preclinical R&D Expert – In-house Drug Development

About the Role

Are you a preclinical R&D scientist who has taken drug programs from the bench toward the clinic — and curious how AI is reshaping drug discovery? Our client is a venture-backed AI lab building frontier AI platforms and physics-based foundation models for chemistry, materials science, and drug discovery. They want hands-on experts across drug modalities to help guide what they build.

In this role, you’ll:

• Review technical materials and real-world R&D data in your area of expertise
• Label, classify, and annotate scientific data and model outputs to improve model performance
• Provide expert perspective on key scientific and development decisions (target/modality selection, optimization, trade-offs, risk)
• Help define structure and quality standards for the client’s dataset pipeline
• Participate in expert discussions, interviews, and research engagements

You’re a strong fit if you:

• Have hands-on, non-administrative preclinical R&D experience at a company that develops its own drug assets in-house and has taken programs to the clinic — Must Have
• Work in a core R&D function: discovery biology, medicinal chemistry, protein/antibody engineering, computational, in vivo/translational, pharmacology/PK-PD, toxicology, or CMC/formulation — Must Have
• Have hands-on experience with one or more drug modalities (small molecules, monoclonal antibodies, peptides, ADCs, bispecifics, mRNA, siRNA, ASOs, PROTACs, molecular glues, cell therapies, gene therapies, radioligand therapies, etc.)
• 5+ years of relevant industry R&D experience (flexible based on depth)
• Have taken a program through lead optimization or IND-enabling/preclinical development (nice to have)
• Have experience at mid-sized, emerging, or resource-constrained biotech — ideally currently outside the top-20 pharmaceutical companies (nice to have)

This is a hands-on preclinical R&D role — likely not the right fit if your work is mainly CRO/CDMO services, academic-only, QC/analytical-only, clinical-development-only, diagnostics, or regulatory/medical-writing.

Role details:

• You’ll interface directly with the client team
• Remote · hourly · seniority welcome from individual contributor through Director

Compensation

• Pay: $85 – $142/hour
• Type: Hourly contract
• Location: Remote