Zymeworks

Associate Scientist, Machine Learning for Protein Design

Software, Computational Modeling, and Protein Engineering - Vancouver, BC

Description

Zymeworks is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of next-generation bispecific and multifunctional biotherapeutics, initially focused on the treatment of cancer. Zymeworks’ suite of complementary therapeutic platforms and its fully-integrated drug development engine provide the flexibility and compatibility to precisely engineer and develop highly-differentiated product candidates.

About the Position

Zymeworks is looking for a highly motivated AI / machine learning associate scientist for protein design applications development within the Technology team. This candidate will work along with the Molecular Simulations, Bioinformatics and Software Engineering team, building comprehensive computational protein modeling and data analytics platforms for use in biologics engineering and drug discovery. We are seeking candidates with experience in developing and applying supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms to address challenges in biomolecular design and optimization. Our scientific staff have opportunities to impact the entire computational method development process, from devising the algorithms to implementation, and direct application in biologics modeling and optimization, pushing the boundaries of in silico therapeutics design.

This is a permanent, full-time position located at our headquarters in Vancouver, BC and will report to a Senior Scientist in the Technology team.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, validate and document state-of-the-art discriminative and generative deep learning algorithms for antibody and protein therapeutics engineering and optimization.
• Leverage public databases and Zymeworks’ proprietary data as well as in-house computational infrastructure to develop scalable tools and automated workflows for biotherapeutics engineering and optimization.
• Implement, train, test and compare various ML approaches for the problem at hand, drive to develop the most optimal and efficient algorithmic solution.
• Work closely with protein engineers, drug developers and translational scientists to identify new opportunities, gather requirements, design and develop machine learning techniques to help advance early-stage therapeutics design processes.
• Communicate the advantages and caveats of the developed technology to technically-diverse internal audiences and external partners.
• Attend conferences and participate in the preparation of patents and publications

Qualifications and Experience

• MS/Ph.D. in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biological Sciences or a related field.
• In-depth experience with modern and classical ML methods with 2 to 5 years of practical experience designing, training and validating such algorithms.
• Candidates are expected to have basic knowledge of molecular sciences and protein structure function relations.
• Strong statistical foundation and working knowledge of supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms, in particular, deep generative models like Boltzmann Machines, Variational Autoencoders, GANS, etc.
• Experience working with Deep Learning frameworks (e.g. TensorFlow/Keras, PyTorch).
• Proficient in at least one of C, C++, Java, or Fortran, and proficient in a scripting language (eg Python, Perl, Ruby).

Preferred Experience

• Source-code management systems such as Git, Github, Bitbucket etc.
• Algorithm parallelization, and knowledge of GPU computation and CUDA.
• Scaling ML algorithms, and hyper-parameter optimization strategies in cloud computing environments such as AWS.

Why Work for Us?

Innovation. Act with Integrity. Collaboration. Care

We come from many countries, cultures, races, ethnicities, abilities and nationalities. We bring our passions including singing, biking, swimming, dancing, cooking, volunteering, parenting, coaching and much more! We are proud of our nearly equal balance of men and women and strengthened by our non-binary and transgender team members. Every employee belongs.

We offer challenging career opportunities, competitive benefits and an environment that recognizes and rewards performance.

How to Apply

NOTE TO EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES: Zymeworks values our relationships with our Recruitment Partners. We will only accept resumes from those partners whom have been contracted by a member of our Human Resources team to collaborate with us. Zymeworks is not responsible for any fees related to resumes that are unsolicited or are received without contract.

Zymeworks

Zymeworks is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Submitted: 12/02/2020