Senior / Principal Scientist – Platform Chemistry

Senior / Principal Scientist – Platform Chemistry

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark – on-site

Team: Platform Chemistry

Reports to: Head of Platform Chemistry

Start: Q1 2027

Relocation: Relocation support available

The opportunity

Black Swans Exist is partnering with a well-funded, innovative biotechnology company in Copenhagen to recruit a Senior / Principal Scientist in Platform Chemistry.

This is a full-time, on-site position within the company's Copenhagen laboratory. The role is highly experimental and requires regular presence at the bench, working closely with colleagues across chemistry, platform development and computational design. The company is looking for an experienced scientist with deep expertise in peptide and macrocycle chemistry who is excited by the opportunity to apply that knowledge within an automated, high-throughput chemistry platform.

The successful candidate will play an important role in expanding the capabilities of the platform while acting as a scientific bridge between design and synthesis.

The position also carries a meaningful leadership component. It is first and foremost a senior scientific role rather than a traditional management position, but as the team grows, the successful candidate will have the opportunity to guide and develop junior scientists while helping shape how the chemistry function evolves.

About the company

The company is developing a next-generation drug discovery platform focused on orally available macrocyclic therapeutics.

Its technology combines automated synthesis, screening and machine learning to design, make and test large numbers of macrocyclic compounds. The objective is to develop oral therapies capable of addressing biological targets that are difficult to reach with conventional small molecules, while potentially providing oral alternatives to therapies currently delivered by injection.

The Copenhagen team is growing, creating an opportunity for an experienced scientist to have significant influence on both individual discovery programmes and the continued development of the underlying chemistry platform.

The role

The Senior / Principal Scientist will serve as a key scientific expert in peptide and macrocycle chemistry and will help determine what chemistry is pursued, how it is executed and how the platform should develop to support future programmes.

This is not a conventional medicinal chemistry position.

Chemistry is performed through an automated platform and delivered primarily as parallel libraries rather than individual compounds made sequentially. As a result, the role requires someone who not only understands peptide and macrocycle chemistry in depth but is also interested in how chemistry behaves when it is automated, parallelised and scaled.

The successful candidate will consider questions such as:

• How will a synthetic route behave when transferred onto an automated platform?
• Which reactions remain robust when hundreds of compounds are produced in parallel?
• Where are the practical limitations of the current chemistry?
• Which new methodologies should be introduced to expand the platform's capabilities?
• How can computational design and experimental synthesis work together more effectively?

The role therefore operates in two directions.

At the project level, the scientist will make chemistry decisions that help discovery programmes progress efficiently and ensure that each synthesis campaign generates meaningful data.

At the platform level, they will identify where chemistry, methodology or automation needs to evolve to support future programmes and new molecular designs.

They will also be an important scientific resource for more junior members of the team, providing guidance, technical direction and mentorship.

Key responsibilities

• Influence and drive chemistry decisions across discovery projects, ensuring that molecular designs make effective use of the platform's capabilities.
• Act as a senior scientific expert in peptide and macrocycle synthesis.
• Design and optimise synthetic strategies suitable for automated, parallel and library-scale chemistry.
• Help strengthen the connection between computational molecular design and experimental synthesis.
• Identify opportunities to expand the platform's chemistry capabilities through new reactions, methodologies and automation approaches.
• Evaluate where existing chemistry or platform capabilities may limit future discovery programmes.
• Make project-level experimental decisions and guide other scientists in executing them.
• Provide scientific mentoring and day-to-day guidance to one or two junior colleagues.
• Contribute to the development of workflows, scientific standards and ways of working as the chemistry organisation grows.
• Remain actively involved in laboratory work and close to the practical execution of the chemistry.

Candidate profile

Essential experience

• PhD in Organic Chemistry, Peptide Chemistry or a related discipline, or an MSc combined with substantial relevant industrial experience.
• Significant hands-on expertise in peptide and/or macrocycle synthesis.
• Strong practical experience with techniques including:
• Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis (SPPS)
• Macrocyclisation
• Purification
• Analytical characterisation
• Experience with automated, parallel or library-scale synthesis, or a strong motivation to specialise further in this area.
• A track record of providing scientific direction or guiding the work of other scientists. Formal line-management experience is not required, but candidates should already have experience acting as a project lead, supervisor, mentor or senior scientific resource.
• Strong scientific judgement and the ability to make decisions when experimental data is incomplete.
• Comfort working within a small, fast-moving organisation where priorities can evolve and processes are still being developed.
• A genuine desire to remain close to experimental chemistry and laboratory work.

Strongly advantageous

• Experience working at the interface between computational molecular design and synthetic chemistry.
• Hands-on experience with automated synthesis equipment, liquid-handling systems or related laboratory automation.
• Understanding of the practical challenges involved in running chemistry unattended or at scale.
• Experience developing or implementing chemistry workflows within a platform-based discovery environment.
• Previous experience joining a small scientific organisation and contributing as it scales.

This role is particularly suited to someone who

Enjoys remaining scientifically and experimentally involved rather than moving away from the laboratory.

The successful candidate is likely to be motivated by solving chemistry problems at platform scale, rather than synthesising compounds exclusively one at a time.

They should be comfortable operating in an environment where scientific ownership is high and experienced scientists are expected to contribute opinions, make decisions and take responsibility for the outcome.

This opportunity will be less suited to someone who prefers the established structures and narrowly defined responsibilities typically found within a large organisation.

Why consider this opportunity?

For an experienced peptide or macrocycle chemist, the position offers the opportunity to have an unusually direct influence on both drug discovery programmes and the technology used to generate them.

Because the organisation and chemistry team are still relatively small, scientific decisions can translate quickly into changes in the platform and discovery pipeline.

The successful candidate will have the opportunity to:

• Influence how an emerging chemistry platform develops.
• Work at the intersection of peptide chemistry, macrocycles, automation and computational design.
• Help establish new chemistry capabilities rather than simply operate within existing ones.
• Take meaningful scientific ownership of projects.
• Mentor and influence a growing team while remaining hands-on in the laboratory.
• Contribute to the development of a new therapeutic modality and discovery approach.

The position is based on-site in Copenhagen, and relocation support is available for candidates moving to Denmark.