Senior Scientist - Chemistry - 12 month initial FTC in Hatfield

For 75 years, Charles River employees have worked together to assist in the discovery, development and safe manufacture of new drug therapies. When you join our family, you will have a significant impact on the health and well-being of people across the globe. Whether your background is in life sciences, finance, IT, sales or another area, your skills will play an important role in the work we perform. In return, we’ll help you build a career that you can feel passionate about.

Our Hatfield site has an opportunity for a Senior Scientist to join them on a 12 month initial FTC. Are you a motivated medicinal chemist, experienced in modern purification techniques? Have you got a PhD in a chemistry related subject and industry experience? Based at our client site in Hatfield, you will be working as part of a team of enthusiastic medicinal chemists designing and synthesising novel compounds with the ultimate goal being to identify a potential candidate suitable for drug development.

What you’ll be doing:

• Plan and execute efficient synthetic routes to deliver final compounds to benefit your assigned project.
• Solve problems with synthetic routes and individual reactions or purifications to access target compounds aligned with project priorities.
• Follow local legislation and CRL policies and procedures on safety and quality.
• Act with due care for the safety of yourself and others at all times.
• Record own work and results to a high standard and in timely fashion in CRL electronic lab notebook.
• Present results, issues and plans around your own work at regular internal or external meetings for your project and client.
• Clearly communicate status of your own work, issues encountered and proposed solutions with your chemistry or project leader.
• Proficient in practical use of standard chemistry lab equipment to efficiently and safely complete reactions.
• Analyse reactions and isolated materials by LC/MS, NMR and other techniques as required to demonstrate structural identity and purity of intermediates and final compounds.
• Collaborate with chemistry colleagues to maintain a tidy and safe lab environment.
• Share own knowledge of drug discovery, particularly in synthetic and medicinal chemistry, with peers.
• Suggest solutions to synthetic challenges that impact across your project team.
• Suggest new target designs to address key project issues.
• Demonstrate consistent key contributions that drive project progression.
• Review work of colleagues for quality and accuracy, as appropriate.
• Release high quality chemistry data to clients, as appropriate.
• Interrogate project data and use understanding to guide own work.
• Demonstrate strategic awareness of project priorities and guide own and others’ work, as appropriate.

Skills and Qualifications:

• An effective communicator and team player.
• Good attention to detail, organisational and time management skills.
• A dynamic, can-do attitude and a flexible approach to problem solving.
• A desire to develop a career discovering new medicines for the future.
• A commitment to personal development to enable future career progression.
• PhD qualified within a chemistry related discipline or BSc / MSc (minimum 2.1) within a chemistry related discipline with some years experience in a lab-based environment.
• A passion for practical synthetic chemistry.
• Ability to work without supervision and as part of a team.
• Track record of providing solutions to technical problems of increasing complexity within projects.
• Ability to interpret NMR and mass spectrometry data.
• Experience of using modern synthetic techniques and purification tools.
• Familiarity with standard chemistry software e.g. ChemDraw and SciFinder.

What we offer you:

• A very comprehensive benefits package from day one, including a large pension contribution, private medical for you (and can add family members), private dental care, critical illness cover, bonus and more!
• Access to great discounts via our employee discount scheme.
• Global opportunities and strong career progression.
• The chance to work on several varied projects and liaise globally and nationally with other business areas.
• To be able to make a difference to health and wellbeing of people.
• To continue your own career growth.
• Parental leave.
• Group Life Assurance and Group Income Protection.
• Remote GP access 24/7.
• Well-being support and initiatives.
• Cycle to work scheme.

At Charles River, we are passionate about our role in improving the quality of people’s lives. Our mission, our excellent science and our strong sense of purpose guide us in all that we do, and we approach each day with the knowledge that our work helps to improve the health and well-being of many across the globe.