Head of Early Discovery

Your work will change lives. Including your own. 

The impact You'll Make

The Head of Early Discovery will lead strategic initiatives to accelerate drug discovery by leveraging cutting-edge technologies, data-driven decision-making, and innovative scientific approaches. This role is pivotal in shaping Recursion’s early discovery pipeline, identifying and validating novel targets, and translating programs into later stages of development. Support for partnership programs is also anticipated. The successful candidate will combine deep scientific expertise with visionary leadership collaborating across groups to drive impactful therapies for patients.

In this role, you will:

Lead strategically:

• Define and execute the early discovery strategy aligned with company objectives.
• Champion modern methodologies, including AI and computational approaches, to enhance decision-making and streamline workflows.
• Effective communication and clear decision making.
• Foster a culture of urgency and patient-centric innovation.
• Lead and inspire a multidisciplinary, international team of scientists and research associates.
• Manage cross-functional collaborations with internal teams and external partners, including academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies and key opinion leaders.

Drive scientific excellence:

• Oversee target identification, validation, and mechanism-of-action studies. A strong focus on oncology & immunology experience is required. Expertise in other disease areas is desirable.  
• Working with the Head of Translational Strategy, support translation of early stage programs into the broader portfolio including preclinical and early clinical development stages.
• Implement high-quality, efficient, data-driven decision-making processes to prioritize assets and allocate resources effectively.

Innovate:

• Spearhead initiatives to integrate advanced cellular and biochemical technologies, functional genomics platforms and fit-for-purpose screening systems.
• Embrace novel approaches to accelerate discovery, validate targets effectively, and ensure programs are data driven.  

The Experience You'll Need:

• PhD in Biology or related discipline.
• 10+ years of postdoctoral experience in oncology & immunology. Additional disease area experience is a plus.
• Proven track record in target identification, validation, and translation into later stages of drug discovery. Experience advancing programs from early discovery through IND enabling studies.
• Demonstrated ability to embrace and implement modern technologies (e.g., AI) in drug discovery.
• Strong strategic thinking and commitment to scientific rigor.
• Exceptional communication and leadership skills.

Additional Desirable Experience:

• Early-stage clinical program involvement for a holistic view of drug development.
• Expertise in contemporary small molecule discovery; experience with other modalities is a bonus.
• Familiarity with immunology / immuno-oncology and/or other disease areas.

Working Location & Compensation:

This is an office-based, hybrid role in either our Salt Lake City, UT office. Employees are expected to work in the office at least 50% of the time. At Recursion, we believe that every employee should be compensated fairly. Based on the skill and level of experience required for this role, the estimated current annual base range for this role is $228,800 - $275,000 (USD). You will also be eligible for an annual bonus and equity compensation, as well as a comprehensive benefits package. 

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The Values We Hope You Share:

• We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust. 
• We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.
• We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.
• We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.
• We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy—leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together. 
• We are One Recursion. True cross-functional collaboration is about trust, clarity, humility, and impact. Through sharing, we can be greater than the sum of our individual capabilities.

Our values underpin the employee experience at Recursion. They are the character and personality of the company demonstrated through how we communicate, support one another, spend our time, make decisions, and celebrate collectively.

More About Recursion

Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) is a clinical stage TechBio company leading the space by decoding biology to radically improve lives. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, a platform built across diverse technologies that continuously generate one of the world’s largest proprietary biological and chemical datasets. Recursion leverages sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to distill from its dataset a collection of trillions of searchable relationships across biology and chemistry unconstrained by human bias. By commanding massive experimental scale — up to millions of wet lab experiments weekly — and massive computational scale — owning and operating one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Recursion is uniting technology, biology and chemistry to advance the future of medicine.

Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City, where it is a founding member of BioHive, the Utah life sciences industry collective. Recursion also has offices in Toronto, Montréal, New York, London, Oxford area, and the San Francisco Bay area. Learn more at www.Recursion.com, or connect on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation. 

Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Recursion Pharmaceuticals and its affiliate companies do not accept resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Recursion or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Recursion’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Recursion, and Recursion will not owe any referral or other fees. Our team will communicate directly with candidates who are not represented by an agent or intermediary unless otherwise agreed to prior to interviewing for the job.