Director of Engineering, BenevolentAI
AI-drug discovery
Be an early applicant
AI-drug discovery
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
201-500 employees
Company mission
BenevolentAI's mission is to unlock the power of AI to transform drug discovery and bring effective medicines to every patient. Their vision is to drive transformational change through scalable technology solutions that result in a consistent pipeline of successful trials and new medicines for patients.
Role
Who you are
- Significant experience providing leadership and direction for professional development in an engineering institution, with particular focus on software engineering roles
- A firm grasp of the current trends within engineering, in particular cloud deployments, microservice architectures, and large scale data ingestion. Well informed on the latest thinking in software engineering systems design, with a focus on APIs, databases, data processing pipelines, and user-facing products
- Experience building and maintaining internal and external partnerships, especially with people operating in different roles who may have conflicting needs or priorities
- Excellent communicator, both verbal and written, with the ability to influence at all levels and across various departments
- Fluent in the fundamentals of computer science, algorithms, data structures, and systems design
- Previous experience in a dynamic, fast-paced, product development environment
- Experience building diverse and inclusive teams with a positive team culture
Desirable
- Experience in drug discovery or in the pharmaceutical industry
- Experience in managing cross-functional teams
What the job involves
- We are looking for a Director of Engineering to lead the BenevolentAI Software Engineering team
- With offices in London and a state-of-the-art research facility in Cambridge (UK), we have cultivated a diverse team of professionals from various scientific, technological, and business backgrounds
- This role will be responsible for defining the strategic direction for software engineering across the company, building out our infrastructure and technology stack, and leading projects for new software development in the years to come
- Build a world-class engineering team by hiring, nurturing, and retaining the best talent from top engineering businesses and academic institutions
- Manage a large and growing team of engineers. Find and grow leaders within the team. Foster a culture of support and inclusion for team members and for collaborators across the company
- Adopt state of the art software engineering algorithms, data structures, infrastructure, and systems design in order to build world-class tools for drug discovery
- Promote a data-driven approach to engineering, focused on delivering meaningful end-user improvements and value aligned with the business objectives
- Establish engineering best practices to maximise return on investment. Integrate software development methodologies where appropriate (eg. prototyping, Agile development, test-driven development, fail-fast proof points, and launch & iterate)
- Proactively seek relevant industry collaborations and/or software solutions, maintaining a keen interest in industry trends and potential beneficial partnerships
- Collaborate with other core functions across the company (eg. Product Management, AI, Informatics, UX, and Drug Discovery Scientists) to align strategic goals with engineering initiatives
- Build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders across the company. Ensure that stakeholders are well informed on the health of the engineering team and the progress of the team’s work
Salary benchmarks
Our take
There is a lot of research being done in the pharmaceutical industry. BenevolentAI say there's a new research paper being published every 30 seconds. They argue this information is not being used in a smart way for the discovery and development of new drugs.
To tackle this problem, BenevolentAI uses artificial intelligence to analyse biomedical information, from clinical trials data to academic papers. They can then identify molecules that have failed in clinical trials and predict how these same compounds can instead be more efficient targeting other diseases.
They argue this approach can dramatically accelerate the discovery of new drugs. They've collaborated with large pharma companies like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutica. A SPAC merger of 1.5 billion euros included AstraZeneca as an investor and will help BenevolentAI accelerate product development.
It's a big market, with Global Market Insights estimating the global healthcare AI market will exceed $10 billion by 2024. This gives them a big opportunity, but it won't be an easy problem to tackle.
Steph
Company Specialist
Insights
Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks
51% female employees
15% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Sep 2019
$90m
LATE VC
Apr 2018
$115m
LATE VC
Total funding: $305m
Company benefits
- Work from home opportunities
Company values
- Put patients first: Everything we do is geared to getting the right medicine to the right patient, faster
- Break boundaries: We deliberately cross traditional boundaries between technology and science, human and machine, to create unique approaches
- Own the solution: We never hold back from contributing our point of view and taking responsibility
- Drive to delivery: We use data to drive decision-making and deliver with the right level of validation
Company HQ
Fitzrovia, London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Joanna Shields
(CEO, not founder)Long career in technology, having previously worked at Google, Facebook and Bebo. Appointed to the House of Lords in 2014 and works as a Digital Economy Adviser to the UK Government.
Michael Brennan
(Co-founder & Non-Executive Director)Previously Head of Corporate Development at BenevolentAI. Before cofounding the company, they were Head of Corporate Development at Proximagen Group and Chief Executive of Novum Securities.
Ivan Griffin
(Co-founder & COO)Worked as a Venture Capitalist for over a decade. Also helped launch Genomics England Ltd, a Company created to deliver the 100,000 Genomes Project as launched by the Prime Minister in 2013. Holds a D.Phil. in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Oxford where they also completed a year’s post-doctoral research.
People progressing
Joined as a Biomedical Informatics Manager. Promoted to VP after 10 months, then again to SVP of Informatics and Data.
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