Senior Scientist, Formulation Development

Company Overview
Cerevel Therapeutics is dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of the brain to treat neuroscience diseases. We are tackling neuroscience diseases with a differentiated approach that combines expertise in neurocircuitry with a focus on receptor selectivity. Our portfolio of pre-commercial neuroscience assets targets a broad range of central nervous system (CNS) disorders, including schizophrenia, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and substance use disorder.   Headquartered in the Greater Boston area, we are bold thinkers, deep experts, resilient pathfinders, and transparent partners who push the boundaries of scientific understanding to unlock breakthrough CNS therapies that have real impact on people’s lives. Cerevel aspires to develop and nurture a culture characterized by trust, respect, courage, curiosity, and compassion, with a relentless focus on mission and results.  Our patient-centricity guides our purpose, how we treat each other and what we work on every day.  The successful candidate will bring their own unique thinking and approach to Cerevel while sharing our core values and convictions.
Role Summary
Cerevel is seeking a Senior Scientist with experience in pre-formulation and solid-state characterization to join our Formulation Development team within Technical Operations. The successful candidate will provide technical expertise in small molecule solid state and pre-formulation research to support drug product development and formulation activities during pre-clinical and early clinical stages. This role is expected to conduct both in-house formulation development activities and manage CMOs for outsourced activities.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct solid state, physical/chemical property characterization on small molecule drug substance to support drug substance and drug product development
• Collaborate with process chemistry to optimize drug substance physical properties, such as particle size, crystal forms, salt/hydrate forms, etc., which are critical to drug product development
• De-risk candidate compounds through thorough physical chemical characterization and stability assessment
• Collaborate with pre-clinical teams to design and guide the development of formulations suitable for use in research and initial toxicology studies
• Develop early-stage formulations by assessing solid state characteristics of small molecule drug substance with respect to target product profile
• Manage and collaborate with CRO’s for the development of characterization techniques related to all pre-clinical and development candidates
• Author pre-formulation/technical development reports and tech transfer documents
• Design and conduct in-house experiments
• Maintain lab organization and records

Required Qualifications

• Knowledge and the ability to use and understand data from common analytical techniques such as XRPD, HPLC, DSC, TGA, NMR, IR/Raman spectroscopy and particle size analysis techniques required to support product development
• Hands-on experience in conducting and interpreting pre-formulation experiments on drug candidates with the objective to understand physicochemical and biopharmaceutical properties relevant to target drug product profile
• Working knowledge of enabled drug delivery systems for oral administration
• Strong organization and communication skills 

Desired Qualifications

• Experiences working within cross functional teams (analytical, process chemistry, quality, regulatory, clinical supply, etc.)
• Experience in authoring and reviewing drug product sections of regulatory documents

Education

• Ph.D. (or equivalent degree) in relevant discipline and 2-5+ years relevant work experience
• B.S. / M.S. in relevant discipline and 8-12+ years relevant work experience

Cerevel is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.