Scientist – II(Biochemistry/Biophysics)

Details:

Title: Scientist – II(MSD1JP00003797)

Duration: 6+ months contract(extendable)

Location: Boston, MA 02115

Pay Range- $50 -$56.66 per hour on W2





Description:





Qualifications

Education Requirement:

• BS/BA degree in biochemistry, biophysics or a related discipline with a minimum of 1-5 years industry experience; or a MS degree in biochemistry, biophysics or a related discipline with 2 or more years of industry experience, preferably with a focus on assay development and compound profiling within a drug discovery environment.

Required Skills:


- Candidate should have basic knowledge of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology
- Candidate should have prior experience with basic biochemical and/or biophysical techniques
- Candidate should be highly motivated, driven, and willing to take the initiative to learn new scientific methodologies
- Candidate should be a strong team player
- Candidate should have excellent oral and written communication skills
- Candidate should be comfortable using a PC computer and proficient in Windows-based operating systems and basic applications for data analysis, such as spreadsheets and databases


Preferred Attributes:


- Proven ability to independently design, develop and implement biochemical and biophysical screening assays using detection modalities such as:
TR-FRET, FP, LC-MS, radiochemical, surface plasmon resonance (BIAcore), fluorescence-based thermal shift (TdF), and/or isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC).
- Hands-on experience performing steady-state and transient-state kinetic experiments to study enzymes and inhibitors.
- Experience in the use of automated liquid handlers such as Echo, Bravo, Biomek, or Hamilton and data analysis and presentation software such as TIBCO Spotfire, Excel and PowerPoint.


Key Notes:


- The role is for a lab-facing biophysics/biochemical assay position, and the team needs someone who can ramp up quickly rather than a fresh graduate.
- Key assay experience to prioritize includes TR-FRET/FRET,
ADP-Glo, fluorescence polarization, and similar biochemical assay formats;
ELISA is less relevant for this role.
- Liquid handling experience is nice to have, not required; the specific instrumentation is considered trainable, and basic pipetting/instrument awareness is sufficient.
- Ideal candidates should have approximately 3–5 years of industry experience.
- No PhD candidates.
- The day-to-day work is primarily lab-based, involving routine assay execution, data analysis, documentation, troubleshooting, and communication of unusual results to the team.
- The candidate should be fairly independent after training, but collaboration will be needed for less routine experiments or troubleshooting.
- Helpful software experience includes TIBCO Spotfire and
GraphPad Prism; other client's-specific tools can be trained.
- The biophysics group is relatively small, about 12 people, within a larger Boston department of around 95 people and a global department of roughly 350–400 people.


Responsibilities

This is an exciting opportunity in the Biochemistry and Biophysics Group within the Department of Pharmacology at MRL-Boston. The successful candidate is expected to:


- Develop and/or run quantitative biochemical and biophysical assays to support identification, characterization, and optimization of small molecule ligands from high throughput screening campaigns and medicinal chemistry efforts.
- Conduct biochemical and biophysical studies to elucidate the modes of ligand interaction and mechanisms of action on target proteins.