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Senior Principal Scientist

South San Francisco, California, United States

About Xaira Therapeutics

Xaira is an innovative biotech startup focused on leveraging AI to transform drug discovery and development. The company is leading the development of generative AI models to design protein and antibody therapeutics, enabling the creation of medicines against historically hard-to-drug molecular targets. It is also developing foundation models for biology and disease to enable better target elucidation and patient stratification. Collectively, these technologies aim to continually enable the identification of novel therapies and to improve success in drug development. Xaira is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and London.

About the Role

We are seeking a strategic and hands-on Senior Principal Scientist, Computational Biology to join our Computational Biology department within the Biology and Drug Discovery organization. This critical role as an individual contributor and peer mentor will advance our genomics and proteomics initiatives relating to mechanism of action studies for early programs and identification of biomarkers and patient subgroups for translational development. Communication with a wide variety of wet lab and dry lab scientists is critical. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in computational biology, translational informatics, and biomarkers, along with a strong record of cross-functional project leadership in pharma or biotech. You must be available to work on-site in South San Francisco.

Key Responsibilities

  • Pre-clinical Omics Analysis: Guide the decision-making, design and execution of multi-omics studies (e.g., transcriptomics, proteomics) in pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo models to identify novel targets, understand mechanisms of action, and support lead optimization.
  • Translational Informatics: Perform the analysis and integration of multi-modal clinical, molecular, and real-world molecular data to drive insights across the drug development lifecycle, including patient stratification, indication selection, and biomarker discovery.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Serve as a key partner to translational medicine scientists, clinical development teams, biostatisticians, and external collaborators. Provide expert guidance in aligning scientific and business strategy with program objectives.
  • Scientific Communication: Effectively communicate translational insights to diverse audiences, including internal and external teams.
  • Project Leadership: Mentor fellow computational biology scientists in using RNA-seq (bulk and single cell) and proteomics to advance programs in the early pipeline; contribute to hiring, resource planning, and talent development. Foster a culture of scientific excellence and innovation.

Qualifications

  • Education: PhD in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Genomics, or related field.
  • Experience: 10+ years of industry experience in pharma, biotech, or related organizations, including substantial post-PhD individual contributor and strategic computational biology work in preclinical, translational informatics.
  • Technical Expertise:
    • Advanced experience in design and analysis of multi-omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics), clinical trial, and real-world molecular data datasets.
    • Proven track record with biomarker discovery, patient stratification, and clinical decision support
    • Proficiency in advanced computational/statistical methods (e.g., machine learning, statistical modeling) and familiarity with clinical assay technologies.
    • Many years of experience with R, python, git, docker and cloud computing platforms
  • Translational Experience: Demonstrated success contributing to regulatory filings and guiding biomarker strategy for early clinical programs.
  • Collaboration & Communication: Excellent interpersonal skills, with a history of impactful collaboration across disciplines and effective communication of complex scientific concepts to varied audiences.
  • Innovation Mindset: Passion for leveraging emerging technologies (e.g., explainable AI/ML, single-cell analysis) to solve key translational challenges and improve patient outcomes.

Compensation

Annual

We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, seeking to provide an open, flexible, and friendly work environment to empower employees and provide them with a platform to develop their long-term careers. A Summary of Benefits is available for all applicants. We offer a competitive package that includes base salary, bonus, and equity.  The base pay range for this position is expected to be $170,000 - $225,000 annually; however, the base pay offered may vary depending on the market, job-related knowledge, skills and capabilities, and experience.

Xaira Therapeutics an equal-opportunity employer. We believe that our strength is in our differences. Our goal to build a diverse and inclusive team began on day one, and it will never end.

TO ALL RECRUITMENT AGENCIES: Xaira Therapeutics does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias or employees. XairaTherapeutics is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.

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