Senior Cheminformatics Engineer

Introduction to role

AstraZeneca is seeking a Senior Cheminformatics Engineer to expand its Augmented Design-Make-Test-Analyse (A-DMTA) platform (R&D IT) in Barcelona. In this role, you will contribute to and help shape the evolution of our cheminformatics software and platforms, setting technical direction and enabling scalable, data-driven drug discovery across R&D. You will also take broader responsibility for influencing technical direction across the platform and work in close contact with science stakeholders to shape drug discovery software and data products. 

As Senior Cheminformatics Engineer, you will be responsible for building scientific solutions for small-molecule and new-modality drug discovery, leveraging your expertise in cheminformatics and software engineering. You will be working within an agile, matrixed team of scientists, software and DevOps engineers, architects, BAs, and other cheminformaticians. 

Essential Skills/Experience

• Expert in using one or more cheminformatics toolkits (e.g., RDKit, CDK, OpenEye, Biovia, Chemaxon) 

• Understanding of drug discovery processes and data, with a particular emphasis on the DMTA cycle and the software products used in it 

• Deep understanding of chemistry data models, structure standardization rules for small molecules and new modalities (e.g., PROTACs, peptides, oligos) 

• Experience of developing novel software to complex drug discovery problems 

• Strong software engineering skills in one or more coding languages (e.g. Python, Java, JavaScript) 

• Experience building production-grade solutions managing end-to-end Software Development Life Cycle 

• Strong experience with developing backend services and their deployment and integration preferably in the cloud 

• Experience using one or more SQL / NoSQL databases and a solid knowledge of query optimisation techniques 

• Exceptional communication skills to present and demonstrate your work to stakeholders and end-users 

• Practical experience applying good software engineering practices – documentation, versioning, testing, code quality review, CICD, etc. 

Desirable Skills/Experience

• Experience using coding agents within IDEs 

• Demonstrated contribution to open-source libraries 

• Experience building and maintaining chemistry data pipelines 

• DevOps specifically in the context of chemistry systems 

• Understanding of software and algorithms used in drug design and predictive AI 

• Ability to explain complex methods &