Senior Research Scientist, Molecular Dynamics

Your work will change lives. Including your own. 

The Impact You’ll Make

Recursion is a leading TechBio company that is transforming drug discovery by using AI and automation to find new medicines. Its powerful platform combines different technologies to create one of the world's largest proprietary collections of biological and chemical data. By running millions of lab experiments each week and using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Recursion brings together technology, biology, and chemistry to revolutionize medicine. 

We are looking for an experienced and motivated scientist to join our computational physics team, which is essential for designing molecules in our pipeline by supporting active drug discovery projects. This team also develops and implements cutting-edge methods to keep our platform at the forefront of computational sciences. 

In this role, you will:

• Lead the application of advanced computational physics methods, to address challenging drug discovery problems and drive project success
• Keep up with the latest scientific developments, assess new technologies for their use in internal workflows, and devise plans for their implementation
• Collaborate with drug designers and software engineers in multidisciplinary teams to deliver scientific solutions to complex technical problems 
• Communicate your findings to both internal and external audiences to guide decisions and contribute to the scientific community

The Team You’ll Join 

You will become an essential member of the Computational Physics team, which supports several phases of drug discovery, from initial hypothesis to lead optimization. The team's goal is to build highly accurate and automated atomistic models and pipelines to obtain crucial molecular-level insights for advancing drug candidates. We employ physics-based and physics-informed models, such as molecular dynamics simulations, absolute and relative binding free energy methods, metadynamics, MM/PBSA, and quantum-mechanical calculations, to enable cost-effective and scalable structure-based drug discovery. We work closely with design teams and collaborate with partners like the AI experts at the Frontier Hub, making our highly accurate methods more accessible and scalable for all.

The Experience You’ll Need

• PhD in Chemistry, Physics, Computational Chemistry, Computational Physics, or a related subject area
• Basic knowledge of drug discovery processes and the application of molecular simulations in this field
• Good programming skills, preferably Python for scripting, data analysis, and tool development
• Proven track record in the application and development of molecular simulation or computational chemistry tools
• Excellent communicator and passionate about creating a collaborative work environment
• Experience in running large-scale jobs using compute clusters or cloud-based infrastructures 

Working Location & Compensation:

This is office-based, hybrid role can be based in our either our London or New York office. Employees are expected to work in the office at least 50% of the time. At Recursion, we believe that every employee should be compensated fairly. Based on the skill and level of experience required for this role, the estimated current annual base range for this role is: GBP £86,300 - £115,500 /USD $163,300 - $216,300. You will also be eligible for an annual bonus and equity compensation, as well as a comprehensive benefits package.

The Values We Hope You Share:

• We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust. 
• We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.
• We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.
• We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.
• We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy—leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together. 
• We are One Recursion. True cross-functional collaboration is about trust, clarity, humility, and impact. Through sharing, we can be greater than the sum of our individual capabilities.

Our values underpin the employee experience at Recursion. They are the character and personality of the company demonstrated through how we communicate, support one another, spend our time, make decisions, and celebrate collectively.

More About Recursion

Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) is a clinical stage TechBio company leading the space by decoding biology to radically improve lives. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, a platform built across diverse technologies that continuously generate one of the world’s largest proprietary biological and chemical datasets. Recursion leverages sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to distill from its dataset a collection of trillions of searchable relationships across biology and chemistry unconstrained by human bias. By commanding massive experimental scale — up to millions of wet lab experiments weekly — and massive computational scale — owning and operating one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Recursion is uniting technology, biology and chemistry to advance the future of medicine.

Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City, where it is a founding member of BioHive, the Utah life sciences industry collective. Recursion also has offices in Toronto, Montréal, New York, London, Oxford area, and the San Francisco Bay area. Learn more at www.Recursion.com, or connect on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation. 

Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Recursion Pharmaceuticals and its affiliate companies do not accept resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Recursion or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Recursion’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Recursion, and Recursion will not owe any referral or other fees. Our team will communicate directly with candidates who are not represented by an agent or intermediary unless otherwise agreed to prior to interviewing for the job.