Director of ML Research – AI Applications

Apheris is focused on revolutionizing AI applications in pharmaceutical R&D. The Director of ML Research will lead and establish a new research team, focusing on applied machine learning for drug discovery, particularly in structural biology and ADMET initiatives.

Responsibilities:

• Set up and lead the dedicated ML Research team within AI Applications, working alongside existing engineering teams and establishing the research mandate for the organisation
• Design, enhance, and train foundation models at scale for structural biology and co-folding, addressing core challenges in protein interaction modelling and drug discovery
• Leverage large-scale proprietary structural biology and biophysical datasets to develop improved data pipelines and model architectures that capture geometric and physical priors
• Translate advances in structural biology ML and adjacent literature into practical modelling approaches for real-world drug discovery problems
• Lead cross-functional delivery across AISB, ADMET, engineering, product, and privacy teams, ensuring research outputs integrate into production workflows
• Collaborate with academic partners on co-folding and structural biology research, contributing to publications and presenting findings at leading conferences
• Represent Apheris in customer discussions and scientific forums, and help solve high-impact modelling problems across multiple pharma partners
• Build and mentor a high-performing team of ML researchers and engineers over time