Director of Business Development

Current job opportunities are posted here as they become available.

The Director of Business Development will drive the growth and sustainability of Conscience’s programs, with a specific focus on engaging academic researchers and technology transfer offices, contract research organizations (CROs), and pharmaceutical companies to engage with, partner, and participate in Conscience programs and funding opportunities. Working closely with the Partnerships Lead, this role will play a pivotal part in advancing Conscience's mission and meeting our organizational goals. This position requires a deep understanding of business principles in drug discovery and development, coupled with exceptional interpersonal and strategic skills.

In the first year, the Director of Business Development will:

1. Develop a comprehensive business strategy to ensure sustainability of the program with clear goals, target audiences, pipeline development, outreach messaging, and tactics for development, engagement, and fundraising efforts.
2. Identify, cultivate, and secure relationships with strategic partners.
3. Develop targets and tracking for business lead generation.

Responsibilities

1. Lead program participation and fundraising by building and maintaining relationships with partners and collaborators in academic research and technology transfer offices, contract research organizations (CROs), pharmaceutical companies, and more.
2. Develop and implement strategic outreach initiatives to enhance partner engagement.
3. Design and implement outreach initiatives to ensure an adequate supply of participants in Conscience programs, and qualified respondents for Conscience funding offerings.
4. Design and execute a business strategy for advancing open science drug development initiatives.
5. Actively collaborate with health research funders, including academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and health authorities, to identify and pursue new business opportunities.
6. Negotiate partnerships and collaboration agreements, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and mission.
7. Contribute to Conscience’s educational and awareness efforts about open science drug development and alternative pathways.

Qualifications & Skills

1. 7+ years experience related to business development, life-sciences technology transfer, alliance management; including experience in relevant drug development industry (Biotech, Pharmaceutical).
2. PhD degree in life sciences and/or MBA.
3. Experience in computational chemistry would be an asset.
4. Outstanding oral and written communication and interpersonal skills, including excellent presentation skills and the ability to be an articulate advocate.
5. Excellent business and industry awareness, and a thorough understanding of industry trends and impact on the business.
6. Solid understanding of investment and commercialization principles of drug discovery and development; open science experience is an asset.
7. Familiarity with Insightly or other CRM tools.
8. Experience in partnerships or sales would be a plus.
9. Team player who thrives in an environment of exchanging information and ideas, and who will support other members of the industrial liaison team to meet collective goals.
10. Experience with asset acquisition, due diligence, in and out licensing deals.
11. Strong analytical skills and accurate data interpretation.
12. Ability to identify priorities and deliver results on deadline.
13. Works and thinks independently with strong organizational and problem-solving capabilities.
14. Interest in emerging technologies, open science, radical collaboration, and AI.
15. Fluent in English, proficiency in French (written and spoken) an advantage.

Our team works virtually in a remote environment built around daily Slack, Zoom, collaborative docs, and email, along with structured in-person time as needed (regular staff retreats, working meetings). We do not have a central office, though eventually we may add that as part of our work environment. We provide every employee with the essential work tools like a laptop, headset, etc. Remote work allows for some work hour flexibility, which is helpful when managing life commitments and family. Most roles include some travel as needed.

While we’re legally based in Canada, our approach to drug discovery and science is global. We believe that collaboration can happen in every corner of the world, from the most established leaders to also the most unlikely of partners. With that in mind, we invite candidates from a broad range of backgrounds and experiences, including those from historically marginalized or underestimated groups — women, indigenous people, people with disabilities, people of colour, formerly incarcerated people, people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or gender nonconforming, first and second generation immigrants, and people from low-income families. A diversity of lived experiences makes our work, and our network community, stronger.

Salary and benefits

The salary range for this position is $105,000 to $125,000 CAD, to be determined by the successful candidate’s relevant skills, training, and experience. In addition, we offer a competitive benefits package that includes enhanced medical, pharmacare, dental, and disability coverage, along with annual matched RRSP contributions. We provide a minimum of 4 weeks paid vacation annually, plus flexible work hours, as part of a hybrid work environment.

About Conscience

Conscience is a Canadian non-profit based in Toronto, launched with support from the Structural Genomics Consortium, and a $49M grant from the Canadian government. We narrow in on areas of market failure – places where traditional models have left people behind with few options, and not enough support, like rare diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and pandemic preparedness.

Conscience will focus on two things:

1. A global approach to open science that will bring new medicines forward for communities that otherwise would be left behind.
2. Advancing the infrastructure to make AI a viable tool for drug discovery, using a competitive model that will benchmark predictions in the lab and share data openly.

Together, we think those two things can make medicines more accessible and affordable.

We’re creating incentives to attract attention and investment in neglected areas that often go unnoticed due to market failures. The end result will be more and faster innovation in AI drug discovery, new medicines, and more equitable access to medicines for everyone, across Canada, and around the world.

About CACHE

The goal of CACHE is to set the stage for a technological breakthrough in computer-based drug design by providing unbiased, high quality experimental feedback on otherwise untested designs from AI experts and computational chemists around the world.

CACHE initiates a new technical drug design challenge every four months to benchmark computational methods. Participants use their computational method to predict molecules that are tested experimentally by CACHE. Each challenge involves two cycles of predictions in order to give participants the opportunity to incorporate learnings from the first round into their designs. At the end of each challenge, CACHE releases all data openly, including chemical structures, to the public.

About DMOS

The Developing Medicines through Open Science (DMOS) program offers support and partnership opportunities for preclinical drug development in disease areas neglected by the pharmaceutical industry, such as orphan diseases and antimicrobial resistance.

This program aims to foster collaborations that undertake preclinical work to develop drug candidates in areas of pharmaceutical market failure, establish proof of concept (POC) for an open science path to drug development and further translate innovations into affordable medicines, generate economic activity, and support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Canada.