VP of Discovery Biology

Overview

Are you ready to own the analysis, predictive modeling and interpretation of large-scale perturbation single-cell transcriptomic screens, turning high-dimensional, complex gene expression state changes into clear biological conclusions that drive therapeutic decisions in cardio-renal-metabolic disease? Large-scale transcriptomic data is at the heart of Gordian’s discovery efforts, and the company will succeed based on our ability to accurately predict physiological changes in disease using single cell gene expression as a readout. In this role, you’ll help ensure our screening and validation decisions are grounded in rigorous, transparent and state-of-the-art analyses, enabling us to confidently prioritize the best targets and interventions.

The Destination:

Gordian Biotechnology is a therapeutics company whose mission is to cure age-related disease and wake up every morning more capable than the day before. Traditional ex vivo screening methods have failed to produce effective treatments, as age-related diseases have complex causes that include interactions with the aged environment. To address this problem, Gordian’s Mosaic Screening pools interventions in living animals, producing datasets with causal validation for hundreds of targets, in the living context of disease and mapped to human patients. This data lets us make the most informed choices on what new ideas for treating complex disease, and move validated targets into drug development. (more info on our website, and in our preprint). We are running this discovery engine in successive indication areas, currently focused on cardiometabolic, to map the in vivo effects of every druggable target across every relevant organ. We then develop drugs and run clinical trials, both internally and in collaboration with multiple partners. And by pooling the data from each program, we can start to identify medicines with broad impact on the multimorbidity and decline caused by aging.

The Journey:

Our mission is audacious, and the path will be full of both challenges and excitement. Two things characterize the Gordian experience: 1) We work as a team, with ownership in our own roles and trust in each other. 2) We strive for extraordinary outcomes, and in doing so grow our skills and capability.

Team

Relying on each other begins with transparency. We set clear goals, visibly connecting individuals and teams to our company objectives. This empowers each of us to make autonomous decisions about our work, knowing how they will affect the bigger picture. Our communication happens out in the open. We give and receive feedback from a perspective of helping each other grow, share mistakes, and ask for help.

Extraordinary

Every day, we ask ourselves, “How could this process or outcome be even better?” Knowing our overall mission, we do what we think will make the most progress, without asking for permission. We don’t shy away from big challenges or unknown territory, we find a way to excel. Gordian is trying to accomplish something tremendously difficult, and that requires people who care deeply about doing exceptional work. We take ownership of our work, ask every day how we can push our science forward faster, and challenge ourselves, and each other, to continually raise the bar. Holding ourselves and each other to that standard has created an environment where each of us grows into a better version of ourselves. Doing exceptional work also means building a team that can sustain it. We keep standing meetings to a minimum so people can focus on the science, encourage open collaboration through hands-on experimentation and "pre-mortem" discussions that strengthen experimental design, and make time to connect over weekly team lunches. We also encourage people to unplug with an unlimited vacation policy. The combination of mission-focus, high expectations, and enabling people to thrive has created an environment that talent finds rewarding, as evidenced by a voluntary attrition of only ~6%/yr. If this environment sounds appealing, help us bring it to life. We are at an exciting inflection point: applying our technology to create comprehensive atlases of therapeutic targets across multiple diseases, partnering for financial and intellectual support, and translating these insights into new medicines. We want both your ability and personality along for the ride. Our culture is a source of great pride; it represents both who we are and who we wish to be. You can dive deeper here: https://www.gordian.bio/culture/

The Role:

Your primary mission as the VP of Discovery Biology is to captain and pace our target discovery engines across multiple therapeutic areas, treating early drug discovery as a team race to beat conventional industry timelines. Reporting directly to the CSO, you will act as a core contributor to our executive therapeutic portfolio strategy, translating corporate milestones into immediate platform output and capability goals. You will lead a talented team of disease biology leads and functional platform heads, adjudicating portfolio resource conflicts using rigorous framework metrics to rapidly and systematically turn our platform into a highly productive pipeline of drug programs.

In your first month, you will absorb our overarching company strategy, 5-year pipeline plan, and program strategic blueprints. You will establish rapport with the three disease biology leads and two functional platform leads that run our discovery biology, tour every reporting team to understand their operations, and construct a comprehensive 6-month operational overview of goals, technical milestones, and responsibilities across target discovery workflows.

Within two months, you will assume active management of your five senior direct reports, establishing structured weekly coordination frameworks and directly leading program management for our flagship internal metabolic disease program. You will evaluate and establish clear strategies for how we track our science globally to upgrade our core data workflows, while helping disease leads formalize and communicate major program decisions across all functional groups.

Within three months, you will take full responsibility for all operational decisions, alignment, and velocity adjustments within and across our target discovery programs. To push our science forward faster, you will propose three concrete improvements to the structural productivity of the organization, while leveraging our platform capabilities to contribute meaningfully to corporate strategy alongside executive leadership.

At the six-month mark and beyond, you will have managed the exploration of hundreds of screening hits and physiological confirmation of dozens of high-confidence candidates now ready for Chemistry assessment. You will optimize the discovery engine to be 20%+ more efficient in target throughput per unit time, implement structural changes to boost target nomination quality and outpace industry standards, and ensure that experimental data records are seamlessly queryable and fully compliant with global pharmaceutical data-sharing partnerships.

And You:

You have a track record of success in high-agency work, consistently creating momentum rather than waiting for direction.

You want to do your best work alongside exceptional teammates and are energized by environments where people push each other to think more clearly, work at a higher standard, and grow into better versions of themselves.

You truly want to play a key role in an early-stage startup screening new targets for intractable diseases of aging: A fast-paced environment full of both uncertainty and new challenges, demanding relentless resourcefulness.

You possess broad exposure directing target discovery efforts across two or more therapeutic indications, moving fluidly from in vivo disease physiology and cell biology through computational approaches. Crucially, you have governed the successful transition of multiple novel assets from initial discovery programs into formal drug discovery pipelines, thinking critically about every dimension of new targets’ potential.

You are an exceptional manager of managers, having directly led three or more distinct teams managers reporting to you. You are energized by cultivating scientific talent, a commitment evidenced by the clear growth in capacity of your previous teams and a history of excellent upward reviews from those you have mentored.

You bring a strong conceptual and experiential understanding of modern genomic platforms, including single-cell transcriptomics, RNA sequencing, and pooled perturbation screens. You view target discovery as system to optimize and are eager to deploy advanced analytical and tracking insights to scale our screening engine's throughput and predictive validity.

Ideally, your background includes domain expertise in cardiometabolic or adjacent complex disease indications and sophisticated disease modeling, and/or a robust understanding of small molecule drug discovery and development paradigms, allowing you to seamlessly translate early discovery hits into development-ready candidates.

The Details:

Gordian aims to provide everything you need to thrive. Beyond or community and science, you’ll have enough equity to be a true stakeholder in the company, competitive salary, full health/dental/vision/life insurance, 401k with match, onsite lunch paid for 3 days a week, an onsite gym, whatever vacation you need to be at your peak, remote work flexibility, and access to world-class mentors and advisors to support your professional growth. Our building is in the heart of the biotech capital of South San Francisco.