Senior Scientist, Retinal Degeneration

Job Title: Senior Scientist, Retinal Degeneration

Location: Cambridge, MA

About the Job

Join the engine of Sanofi’s mission — where deep immunoscience meets bold, AI-powered research. In R&D, you’ll drive breakthroughs that could turn the impossible into possible for millions.

Sanofi is seeking a highly motivated translational scientist to spearhead preclinical drug discovery programs for blinding retinal diseases, including age-related macular degeneration and glaucoma. As a Senior Scientist in the Retinal Degeneration group within Ophthalmology Research, you will use innovative experimental approaches and advanced disease models to validate therapeutic strategies and discover promising drug candidates. The successful candidate will work collaboratively in matrixed, cross-functional teams to generate high-quality and comprehensive data packages to nominate and advance therapeutic candidates toward clinical development. This role presents an exciting opportunity to help shape the future of ophthalmology therapeutics and bring transformative vision-preserving treatments to patients around the world.

About Sanofi:
We’re an R&D-driven, AI-powered biopharma company committed to improving people’s lives and delivering compelling growth. Our deep understanding of the immune system – and innovative pipeline – enables us to invent medicines and vaccines that treat and protect millions of people around the world. Together, we chase the miracles of science to improve people’s lives.
 

Main Responsibilities:

• Apply scientific expertise and judgement to initiate, design, direct, execute, analyze, and document research studies to translate new targets from discovery to therapeutic disease programs and preclinical development

• Lead research projects in a matrixed team environment to achieve go/no-go decisions

• Design and conduct in vitro and in vivo mechanism-of-action, proof-of-concept, and biomarker studies to validate targets and evaluate neuroprotective therapeutic strategies

• Develop assays and collaborate cross-functionally to screen preclinical candidates of diverse modalities using target- and disease-relevant functional readouts to inform on pharmacology and efficacy

• Actively contribute to interdisciplinary research programs in a highly collaborative manner across internal groups and with external partners.

• Prepare high-quality analyses, interpretation, documentation, and presentations to support project milestones, publications, patent filings, and regulatory (IND/CTA) filings

• Present project data packages at governance meetings

• Communicate findings internally and externally through presentation and publication

About You

• Earned Ph.D. or equivalent degree in cellular biology, neuroscience, physiology, or other scientific related discipline plus at least 3 years research experience in biopharmaceutical or academic setting

• Experience in retinal cell biology, retinal disease and degeneration, neurodegeneration, neuroprotection, or other biologically-relevant field

• Experience in drug development or translational research, with a strong understanding of drug discovery processes

• Comprehensive experience with molecular, cellular, and biochemical methods, assay development, and in vitro disease models

• Experience preparing high-quality documents including experimental protocols, SOPs, technical reports, and presentations

• Track record of significant contribution to research projects and scientific publications

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience analyzing data using computational approaches (e.g., R, Python)

• Experience in drug development for retinal diseases

• Experience with advanced in vitro (e.g., iPSC, organoid) and animal models of retinal disease and degeneration

• Experience drafting regulatory documents to support IND or CTA applications with agencies like the FDA and EMA

• Experience managing studies at CROs

• Experience conducting in vivo pharmacology and/or biodistribution studies in rodents or NHPs

• Experience with assays for retinal degenerative processes, such as cell death, barrier function, metabolic and oxidative stress, lipid metabolism, tissue remodeling, and inflammatory signaling

• Experience in high-throughput assay development

• Experience using automated high-throughput screening platforms and robotics

Skills and competencies:

• Ability to work independently as well as part of cr