Associate Director / Director, In Vivo Pharmacology

By three months, every new in vivo study goes through a written design review before animals are ordered. The review covers the question, primary endpoint, power calculation, controls, and the go/no-go criteria the result will decide. You also own the validation plan and timeline for targets under our major pharma partnership, and you present the results at partner reviews.

By six months, have the obesity, heart failure, kidney, and small-molecule programs delivering to schedule; prevent avoidable study repeats through stronger design; add at least one new in vivo capability; and have multiple scientists independently owning experiments from design through interpretation.

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 validating new targets for intractable diseases of aging: a fast-paced environment full of both uncertainty and new challenges, demanding relentless resourcefulness.

You have deep obesity and metabolic in vivo expertise. You have personally run and interpreted rodent obesity and metabolic efficacy studies — DIO and/or genetic models — inside a program where the result drove a real decision, and you know what it takes to make those results trustworthy. You bring 5+ years of this inside industry discovery programs (10 preferred), with responsibility for program-level deliverables.

Your technical judgment is earned, not inherited. You have personally run rodent studies — dosing, blood collection, takedowns, tissue harvest — for long enough that you can tell good technique from bad on sight, teach it, and diagnose a study that is not working. You have not been away from the bench so long that you would struggle to demonstrate a method yourself.

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.

• 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.

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.