Manager/Director and Head of Route Planning - Glasgow, United Kingdom - Chemify Ltd

Description

Manager/Director and Head of Route Planning

Chemify is creating a future where the access to important molecules, drugs and new materials currently unimaginable are instantly accessible radically increasing the speed of innovation, quality of life, and reach of humanity.

The company is building the infrastructure to digitize chemistry to design, make, and discover new molecules with the desired function and properties instantly and on-demand.

Chemify has built a platform that combines purpose-built programming languages, robotics, AI, and the world's largest and continuously growing database of chemical programs to accelerate chemical discovery to new, transformative heights.

The Manager/Director and Head, Route Planning for Chemify's high-throughput automated synthetic chemistry laboratories will be primarily responsible, directly and through a team, for the design and selection of routes for the synthesis of commercial and other high value molecules in Chemify's high-throughput laboratory, routinely review the progress made against selected routes and thoughtfully adjust activities in the laboratory based on new data and challenges.

Within the operational responsibilities of the role, the Manager/Director will establish, maintain, and continuously improve best-in-class route planning practices with a focus on scalability and consistent high-quality practices across many team members.

Additionally, the successful candidate will be working extremely closely with the technology teams at the company to develop, and maintain roadmaps for rapid and transformative improvements in route planning and execution capabilities at the company in the context of the systemization of chemistry, to increase in throughput, decrease in costs, and provide improvements in quality.

As a corollary, onboarding new technologies, in particular predictive AI tools and visualization products, quickly and efficiently will be a core responsibility of the Route Planning head.

The right leader for this role at Chemify will have a very deep understanding of synthetic chemistry and route planning practices, will have a strong academic background enhanced with years of experience in industry and thus exposure to hundreds / thousands of synthetic chemistry campaigns – and learned from the challenges.

Additionally, the candidate will understand the best managerial practices for high-throughput operational contexts, be proficient in operational principles and optimality functions for industrial outfits, and have a knack for technology (software, hardware, AI) and how to best apply it in the context of Chemify laboratories.

The Manager/Director will start at Chemify headquarters and will transition towards a leadership role at Chemify's pilot plant to onboard and operate bleeding edge technology, tools, and processes to demonstrate mature and operationalized performance.

As the Head for Chemify's route planning practices, the Manager/Director will continue to work closely with HeadQuarters in Glasgow and in particular, the R&D teams to help specify, provide feedback on, and ultimately onboard new devices, processes, protocols, software, predictive tools, hardware, robotic platforms, and other technology solutions at the pilot factory, spearheading the operationalization of chemistry before the become available to other factories.

They will work very closely with the Head of Laboratory Operations, the COO, VP Quality, the Site head of Chemify's pilot facility, the CTO / head of chemistry R&D / heads of software and hardware development, and other key team members to ensure a holistic, rapid, and successful scale-up + scale-out of Chemify into a premier designer and provider of molecules for the Chemical industry.

Lead the systematic implementation and operationalization of route planning processes processes into the world's most efficient molecular synthesis factory: establish and improve strong processes and operational practices optimizing the use of existing AI, software, and robotic systems.

Participate in scoping and deploying next generation technologies to quickly and dramatically improve performance.

Become a subject matter expert in all aspects of Chemify's platform and laboratory processes, from supply chain, reagent management, reactions, purification, analytical tools, to software tools, AI predictive systems, and robotic products to optimize route planning practices in the context of rapidly growing capabilities and a new optimality function for automated and data-driven chemistry.

Build and supervise a high-performing delivery team for all route planning activities needed for commercial and high-throughput R&D activities.

Develop and manage processes for efficient collaboration with production chemistry, analytical / purification, operational cheminformatics, and sales / BD for successful end-to-end delivery ahead of schedule, exceeding requirements, at the highest levels of quality, and highest efficiency.

Supervise the day-to-day operations and continuous improvements of the route planning activities at Chemify's Pilot Facility. Report Key Performance Indicators and critical data to the Site Head, Head of operations, Senior Leadership Team. Create robust operational framework ready for deployment to all Chemify facilities across the world. Facilitate transfer of know-how personally and by allocating expert resources once established and optimized in the pilot facility.

Contribute as a key team member in setting the strategic direction of the overall technology of the company, with a focus on route planning and predictivity of chemistry.

Keep a close interface and excellent working relationship with the Senior Leadership Team as well as within the entire Chemify organization.

PhD in Chemistry or related discipline
5+ years in management or high visibility role in top-performing synthetic chemistry outfits
Operational, and business acumen
Excellent communication and influencing skills in English.
5+ years of experience in industry focused on planning synthetic routes for complex and high-throughput molecular synthesis work
Manager/Director and Head of Route Planning
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