Alembic Pharmaceuticals Ltd. is seeking a skilled Biochemist/Chemical Biologist specializing in drug discovery to join their team in Vadodara, India. This full-time, on-site position reports directly to the Head of Drug Discovery and offers a title and compensation that reflect the candidate’s experience. The ideal candidate will possess hands-on expertise in biochemical and biophysical assays, including surface plasmon resonance (SPR), FRET-based assays, and mammalian cell culture, to facilitate drug discovery across various therapeutic areas such as inflammation, immunology, oncology, and metabolic disorders.
Job Role: Biochemist/ Chemical Biologist – Drug Discovery
Company: Alembic Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
Location: Vadodara, India | Full-time | On-site
Reports to: Head of Drug Discovery
Title & compensation: commensurate with experience
Apply: drugdiscoverycareer@alembic.co.in
About the Role:
Alembic is hiring a hands-on Biochemist with expertise in biochemical and biophysical assays, SPR, FRET-based assays, and mammalian cell culture to support drug discovery across therapeutic areas, including inflammation, immunology, oncology, metabolic disorders, and other disease areas. The scientist will independently develop assays, characterize compound–target interactions, and generate data supporting hit identification, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization.
We are looking for a proactive, highly collaborative go-getter who thrives in fast-paced discovery environments. This role offers a unique opportunity to contribute to discovery programs in India while actively bridging into the U.S. biotech ecosystem, collaborating with global scientific partners to help deliver transformational medicines. In this position, you will not only make a meaningful scientific contribution but also grow as a drug discovery scientist, gaining broad exposure to multidisciplinary research and direct involvement in advancing innovative therapeutic ideas.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop, optimize, and validate biochemical assays to measure enzyme activity, compound binding, and protein–protein interactions across disease-relevant targets.
- Perform surface plasmon resonance (SPR) experiments to determine binding affinity and characterize association and dissociation kinetics.
- Design and execute FRET and TR-FRET, BLI assays, including HTRF formats, with appropriate controls to identify assay interference.
- Develop and execute complementary biophysical assays for hit confirmation and compound characterization using techniques such as fluorescence polarization (FP), Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC), Alpha Screen, AlphaLISA, Thermal shift assay (TSA), DSC, Microscale Thermophoresis (MST), ELISA, and circular dichroism (CD).
- Express, purify, and characterize recombinant proteins for biochemical and biophysical studies.
- High-throughput screening (HTS) of small-molecule libraries, dose–response studies, hit confirmation, counter-screening, and selectivity profiling.
- Independently maintain mammalian or insect cell cultures, including aseptic handling, passaging, cryopreservation, recovery and routine contamination checks.
- Develop and perform disease-relevant cell-based assays to assess compound potency, viability, functional activity, and cellular target engagement.
- Develop and run NanoBRET target engagement assays in live cells to confirm intracellular binding and selectivity.
- Troubleshoot assays, assess reproducibility, signal quality, and suitability for screening
- Collaborate with medicinal chemistry, DMPK and pharmacology teams to guide compound progression.
- Maintain laboratory records, prepare SOPs and technical reports, and present results
Required Qualifications and Skills
- MSc or PhD in Biochemistry, Biotechnology, Molecular Biology or a related discipline.
- Minimum 5+ years of relevant experience in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or contract research organizations.
- Hands-on expertise in SPR assay development, execution and binding-data interpretation.
- Practical experience with FRET/TR-FRET-based assays and complementary biochemical and biophysical methods such as MST, ITC, CD, HTRF, NanoBret assays and all the assays listed in responsibilities.
- Ability to independently maintain mammalian cell cultures and perform cell-based experiments,
- Strong understanding of protein biochemistry, enzyme kinetics, molecular interactions, and small-molecule pharmacology, and can perform SDS page, Western blot analysis, protein conjugation, etc.
- Ability to adapt assay methods to different target classes and therapeutic areas.
- Proficiency in GraphPad Prism and relevant instrument analysis software.
- Strong experimental planning, troubleshooting, documentation and excellent communication skills.
- Demonstrate a go-getter mindset with high ownership, urgency, and solution-oriented thinking.
Preferred Experience
- Prior experience with PROTACS, degraders and chemoproteomics.
- Developing HTS and robotic formats for screening assays
- X-ray Crystallography
- Primary cell culture assays
How to Apply
Email the following to drugdiscoverycareer@alembic.co.in with the subject line “Biochemist/Chemical Biologist-Drug Discovery”
Alembic values diversity and is committed to an inclusive workplace.
