# Principal Scientist in Pharmaceutical Development

**Company**: IQVIA
**Location**: Cambridge
**Work arrangement**: onsite
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: full-time
**Category**: Research
**Industry**: Healthcare

**Apply**: https://iqvia.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/IQVIA/job/Cambridge-United-Kingdom/Principal-Scientist--Pharmaceutical-Development_R1565135?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
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## Description

We are seeking a Principal Scientist in Pharmaceutical Development to help drive our scientific ambition, shape the future of our discipline, and play a key role in delivering innovative solutions for clients across the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.

You will combine scientific leadership, client engagement and project delivery responsibilities. You will design, oversee and interpret developability studies to support candidate progression, integrate physicochemical, solid-state, biopharmaceutic and formulation data to inform key development decisions, and apply digital, computational and AI-enabled approaches to support developability risk assessment.

The successful candidate will help embed developability thinking earlier in drug discovery programmes, using experimental, computational and AI-enabled approaches to identify risks, generate insight and support clear recommendations for clients.

Key Responsibilities:

- Design, oversee and interpret developability studies to support candidate progression.

- Integrate physicochemical, solid-state, biopharmaceutic and formulation data to inform key development decisions.

- Apply digital, computational and AI-enabled approaches to support developability risk assessment, literature insight, data interpretation and experimental prioritisation.

- Translate AI-supported and experimental insights into clear, scientifically robust recommendations for drug discovery teams and client programmes.

- Recommend formulation and development strategies for challenging molecules.

- Provide scientific leadership within multidisciplinary drug discovery programmes.

- Lead pharmaceutical development projects from proposal through delivery.

- Act as the primary scientific contact for client programmes.

- Lead and support business development through scientific proposals, technical discussions and client interactions.

- Mentor and develop junior scientists.

- Contribute to the continued growth and evolution of the Pharmaceutical Development group.

Requirements:

- A postgraduate degree (BSc/MSc or PhD) in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry or a related discipline.

- Extensive experience of working in an industrial R&D setting, supporting developability assessment, drug delivery and candidate progression for novel small molecule APIs, within multidisciplinary drug discovery programmes.

- Strong knowledge of the drug discovery and development process.

- Experience of mentoring junior colleagues.

- Ability to communicate complex scientific data to stakeholders with varying degrees of expertise.

- A proactive can-do approach, attention to detail and the ability to adapt to changing demands and requirements.

- Scientific project management.

Additional experience in the following approaches would be valuable:

- Model-informed and data-driven formulation design.

- Computational, predictive and AI-enabled developability approaches.

- Ability to interpret PK data and use it to inform formulation and candidate selection strategies.

- Application of mechanistic developability approaches (e.g. DCS, PBPK or related modelling frameworks).

- Physicochemical characterisation and developability assessment.

- Solubility, dissolution and absorption risk evaluation.

- Integration of experimental, computational and predictive data to support decision making.

- Enabling formulation technologies (e.g. spray drying, particle engineering, lipid-based systems).

- Oral drug delivery and absorption enhancement strategies.

- Working knowledge of solid form characterisation techniques.

- Experience of supporting non-oral dosage routes (nasal, inhaled, dermal or parenteral).

- Experience addressing developability challenges of Beyond Rule of 5 compounds.

## Skills

### Required
- Pharmaceutical Sciences
- Chemistry
- Drug Discovery
- Developability Assessment
- AI-enabled Approaches

### Nice to have
- Model-informed Formulation Design
- Computational Developability Approaches
- PK Data Interpretation
- Mechanistic Developability Approaches
- Physicochemical Characterisation

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