Principal Research Scientist II, Process Chemistry
About this opportunity
Company Description
About AbbVie
AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com . Follow @abbvie on LinkedIn, Facebook , Instagram , X and YouTube.
Job Description
AbbVie Process Chemistry is responsible for the chemical development of AbbVie’s clinical candidates. We are looking for a highly motivated Principal Research Scientist II who can make scientific contributions and develop strategies, timelines and key activities across drug substance modalities, including small molecules. The candidate must be able to mentor and develop staff with experimental approaches to solve difficult scientific and technical challenges. The candidate will be an integral part of project teams and will be responsible for developing the synthetic process and executing activities required for drug substance process development. Working with cross-functional colleagues, the candidate will develop productive collaborations and communications with scientific teams.
Responsibilities:
The candidate will participate and/or lead project teams associated with drug substance process development and characterization. Develop and characterize drug substance processes in the laboratory and translate them to scalable processes.
Proactively advise and share knowledge and expert opinions with subordinates, peers, and senior management. Mentor staff in troubleshooting strategic and experimental issues.
Author and review key regulatory documents, laboratory data, technical memos and reports.
The position involves multi-disciplinary interactions with organic chemists, analytical chemists, engineers, drug product development, and program management.
The candidate will identify and nurture ideas for continuous improvement activities and initiatives within the department.
The candidate will be responsible for setting project strategies, defining project responsibilities and timelines, developing control strategies, providing leadership in a matrixed team setting and developing robust processes for cGMP manufacturing.
Qualifications
BS (16+ years); MS (14+ years) or PhD (8+ years) in Chemistry or allied field, with 8+ years of previous work experience in a pharmaceutical laboratory setting.
Proven scientific leadership; strong interpersonal and communication skills for facilitating collaborations and a demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional process development teams.
Experience with GMP drug substance manufacturing and process development.
Experience in managing and developing scientific leaders.
The successful candidate will have a strong understanding of modern organic chemistry, mechanistic theory, process development, control strategy development, and regulatory starting material strategies.
Key AbbVie Competencies:
Interacts well with diverse groups within function and maintain strong working relationships with internal and external collaborators to enable higher performance.
Learns fast, grasps the "essence" and can change course quickly where indicated.
Raises the bar and is never satisfied with the status quo.
Creates a learning environment, open to suggestions and experimentation for improvement.
Embraces the ideas of others, nurtures innovation and manages innovation to reality.
Additional Information
Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law:
The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of thisposting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location,and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future.
We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick), medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.
This job is eligible to participate in our long-term incentive programs.
Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission,incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless anduntil paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law.
AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community. Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.
US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html
US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:
https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 423 comparable Principal Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research roles across 59 biopharma companies.
Salary context
192 of 423 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 423 comparable roles
+ 16 more countries
Seniority mix
423 of 423 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
50 of 423 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
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How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.