Associate Director / Director, In Vivo Pharmacology

The posting, as Gordian Biotechnology wrote it

Are you ready to lead the in vivo function at the center of Gordian’s target-discovery engine — from the screens that generate novel targets, through the studies that decide which ones advance, to the pharmacology that turns them into drugs?

Gordian is the leader in applying in vivo screening for target discovery. Almost everything we know that our competitors do not, we learned inside a living animal. As Head of In Vivo Pharmacology, you will decide which models and experiments can answer the company’s most important questions, lead a nine-person team, and turn rigorous in vivo pharmacology into clear portfolio decisions across our cardiometabolic portfolio.
Journey + Destination:

Gordian Biotechnology is a therapeutics company designed as a machine that systematically
reveals the right way to cure age-related diseases: a machine for creating time.

To do that, we built Mosaic Screening, which makes causal validation both grounded in human
pathophysiology and radically more scalable in living diseased tissue. It lets us measure the causal effects of hundreds of perturbations directly in vivo, which reveals therapeutic maxima across vast target spaces (more details on our website and in our preprint ). The machine is already producing wins: across six disease areas, we have mapped nearly as many targets as the field reported in 20 years , advanced a novel osteoarthritis candidate into IND-enabling studies, and started an obesity drug-discovery collaboration with Pfizer.

But there are still many diseases left to cure, and expanding the machine to tackle them starts with its most important resource: its people and culture. We work as a team , using clear goals, open communication, and direct feedback to make autonomous decisions with the bigger picture in mind. We aim for extraordinary outcomes , continually improving how we work and acting on what will create the most progress, even in unknown territory. We have deliberately designed an environment to sustain that standard: few standing meetings, hands-on experimentation and pre-mortems, weekly team lunches, and unlimited vacation that people are encouraged to use. You can dive deeper into our culture here .

This way of working has been crucial to Gordian’s success.

The Role

Your mission is to make three connected in vivo workstreams succeed:

• Screens . Ensure the in vivo experiments that generate novel target hits are executed cleanly and on schedule.
• Target validation. Own the validation of screen hits with indication and ex vivo experts, define defensible evidence standards, and recommend which targets are strong enough to enter drug discovery.
• Drug discovery. Design pharmacodynamic and efficacy studies for targets in discovery, including small-molecule programs, and establish the evidence needed for program decisions.

Across all three you are Gordian’s design authority: model, modality, dose, route, controls, timepoints, group size, and statistical power. You will use pilot
[…]
.

You design studies exceptionally well. You size groups from power calculations rather than from habit, choose controls and timepoints that make a result interpretable, and say clearly what a design will and will not be able to conclude. You recognise when a proposed study is larger than the question requires, and you default to a pilot before a large cohort and to establishing exposure and PD before running efficacy.

You are fluent in small molecule in vivo pharmacology, and you understand what oligonucleotide and AAV approaches can and cannot deliver in vivo well enough to choose between modalities. Hands-on experience with all three is not expected.

You have managed scientists and technical staff, trained people on technique yourself, and take real satisfaction in growing them.

You communicate so that decisions follow . You can explain a result and its limits to chemistry, computational, or executive colleagues; you can tell a program lead no and have the reasoning land; and you are credible presenting and defending data to external partners.
Additional valuable skills if you have them

• In vivo experience with oligonucleotides (ASO or siRNA), or with AAV and gene therapy.
• Direct experience with HFpEF, CKD, or atherosclerosis models.
• Advanced phenotyping: echocardiography, invasive hemodynamics, indirect calorimetry, EchoMRI or DEXA, or glucose clamps.
• Experience building or scaling a vivarium or an in vivo group from small scale.
• Partner- or BD-facing experience presenting preclinical data.
• A peer-reviewed publication record in metabolic or cardiovascular physiology.

The Details

This is an onsite leadership role in South San Francisco because regular laboratory presence is central to the work. Gordian offers meaningful equity, a competitive salary, full health, dental, vision, and life insurance, a 401(k) with match, onsite lunch three days a week, an onsite gym, an unlimited vacation policy, and access to world-class mentors and advisors.