Your work will change lives. Including your own.
The Impact You'll Make:
Recursion is seeking an accomplished clinical development leader to serve as Senior Vice President, Clinical Development. This is a senior operational and strategic role responsible for driving the clinical execution of the company's differentiated pipeline across oncology and rare disease, reporting directly to the Chief Medical Officer.
The SVP will serve as the primary architect of clinical development strategy at the program level, translating scientific vision into rigorous, efficiently executed trials that generate compelling data packages to support regulatory advancement and eventual approval. The SVP, Clinical Development will lead a team of clinical scientists and medical directors, and cross‑functional partners spanning biostatistics, clinical operations, regulatory affairs, and translational medicine.
This individual will be expected to embed the company's technology‑driven clinical philosophy of applying AI, machine learning, and real‑world data to improve trial design, accelerate enrollment, and strengthen evidence generation into every aspect of clinical program execution. This position represents a rare opportunity to shape the clinical trajectory of a technology‑enabled biotechnology pioneer at a pivotal stage of its growth. The SVP, Clinical Development will play a central role in initiating and advancing clinical programs, including generating the data readouts across multiple programs that will define the company's near‑term value inflection points and long‑term pipeline strategy.
In this role, you will:
- Lead the clinical strategy, design, and execution of this company’s oncology and rare disease programs.
- Define and execute clinical development strategy for assigned programs, including study design, endpoint selection, patient population strategy, and regulatory pathway, in close alignment with the CMO and executive leadership team.
- Lead the design, initiation, and oversight of early and late-stage clinical trials across oncology and rare disease indications, ensuring scientific rigor, regulatory compliance, and operational excellence.
- Partner with organization’s ClinTech organization to embed clin tech within the clinical development function, applying AI-assisted protocol design, digital enrollment tools, and advanced analytics to improve trial efficiency and evidence quality.
- Provide direct leadership and mentorship to a team of clinical development professionals including medical directors, clinical scientists, and program leads; foster a culture of scientific excellence, accountability, and collaboration.
- Partner closely with Regulatory Affairs to lead FDA and international agency interactions, guide IND strategy, and support clinical sections of regulatory submissions and responses.
- Collaborate with Clinical Operations to ensure trials are delivered on time, on budget, and to the highest quality standards; provide clinical oversight and governance throughout study execution.
- Integrate with Translational Medicine and Biostatistics to develop biomarker strategies, patient selection criteria, and adaptive trial designs that maximize probability of technical success.
- Oversee clinical safety monitoring, adverse event review, risk management and interactions with Independent Data Monitoring Committees.
- Contribute to portfolio prioritization decisions and resource allocation discussions with the CMO and executive team, providing clinical input on go/no-go decision frameworks and program risk assessments.
- Represent the company externally at scientific conferences, advisory boards, investigator meetings, and key opinion leader engagements; serve as a credible scientific spokesperson for the clinical development organization.
- Support business development due diligence, partnership discussions, and potential in-licensing evaluations with clinical and scientific expertise.
- Contribute clinical content for investor communications, including earnings calls, KOL events, and R&D days, in partnership with the CMO and Investor Relations.
The Team You'll Join:
You will join Recursion’s Clinical Development organization, reporting to the Chief Medical Officer. The Clinical Development team is an empowered, execution-minded group responsible for translating Recursion’s innovative science into medicines for patients.
You will work closely with leaders across Development, Regulatory, Development Sciences, Clinical Operations, Data Science, Biology, Chemistry, Portfolio Strategy, Communications, Legal/Compliance, and future commercialization functions. Together, you will help ensure Recursion’s clinical programs are informed by robust evidence, external medical insight, patient need, and the full potential of the RecursionOS.
The Experience You'll Need:
- 15 or more years of clinical development experience, with substantial time spent in oncology, rare disease, immunology or precision medicine in the biotechnology or pharmaceutical industry.
- MD, MD/PhD with specialization in oncology, hematology, rare disease, immunology or a related biomedical discipline. An MD or MD/PhD is strongly preferred given the clinical nature of the role and the expectation of direct regulatory and investigator-facing engagement.
- Demonstrated experience leading Phase 1 and Phase 1/2 clinical trials for novel mechanisms, including dose-escalation studies and biomarker-selected populations; direct accountability for IND filings and clinical development plans is required.
- Strong track record of cross-functional program leadership, with experience managing and developing teams of clinical scientists and medical directors.
- Experience working in or comfort operating within a TechBio, data science-forward, or AI-enabled drug development environment; intellectual curiosity about the application of AI and digital tools to clinical development is essential.
- Direct experience engaging with FDA and other regulatory agencies is required.
- Proven ability to operate with scientific rigor and operational discipline in a resource-constrained, clinical-stage company; experience managing development timelines and budgets is required.
- Strong scientific acumen in small molecule drug development, kinase biology, oncology mechanisms of action, or rare disease pathophysiology; comfort engaging at the level of detail required to drive protocol design and data interpretation.
- Exceptional communication and leadership skills, with the ability to represent the organization credibly to regulators, investigators, and key opinion leaders.
- Experience working in a publicly traded company with exposure to investor-facing communications and an understanding of the business context within which clinical milestones are delivered is preferred.
- Strategic mindset balanced with a hands-on operational orientation; ability to move fluidly between high-level strategic discussions and program-level execution details.
The Values We Hope You Share:
- We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust.
- We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.
- We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.
- We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.
- We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy - leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together.
- We are One Recursion. True cross-functional collaboration is about trust, clarity, humility, and impact. Through sharing, we can be greater than the sum of our individual capabilities.
Our values underpin the employee experience at Recursion. They are the character and personality of the company demonstrated through how we communicate, support one another, spend our time, make decisions, and celebrate collectively.
More About Recursion
Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) is a clinical-stage TechBio company decoding biology to radically improve lives. Recursion is advancing a portfolio of differentiated investigational medicines across its wholly owned and partnered pipeline in oncology, rare disease, neuroscience, immunology, and other therapeutic areas with significant unmet need. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, an AI-native, end-to-end drug discovery and development platform integrating biology, chemistry, and clinical development into a unified intelligence system. Powered by proprietary multimodal data, purpose-built AI models, and bilingual teams fluent in both science and AI, the Recursion OS is designed to translate complex science into medicines that matter - faster, better, and at scale - for patients who are waiting.
Recursion’s platform infrastructure is anchored in Salt Lake City, Utah and Milton Park, Oxfordshire, where its automated biology and chemistry laboratories generate proprietary data at industrial scale. Recursion also maintains offices in New York, Montréal, and London, three global hubs for talent and leadership at the intersection of AI and scientific innovation. Learn more at www.recursion.com, or connect on X and LinkedIn.
Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation.
Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.
Recursion leverages AI in our hiring process. We use Greenhouse's Talent Matching AI technology feature to help review applications against the skills and experience we've identified as important for this role. It analyzes your resume and application responses to assess how closely your qualifications match our criteria - but all decisions are made by our human recruiters and hiring managers, including whether to move to the next phase of review. Talent Matching does not automatically advance or reject any candidate. By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have been informed about and consent to this use of the Talent Matching tool in our review process. Please refer to our Recursion Privacy Policy at https://www.recursion.com/privacy-notice/ for more information about our processing of personal data and your rights.
Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Recursion Pharmaceuticals and its affiliate companies do not accept resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Recursion or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Recursion’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Recursion, and Recursion will not owe any referral or other fees. Our team will communicate directly with candidates who are not represented by an agent or intermediary unless otherwise agreed to prior to interviewing for the job.