Principal Research Scientist II – Psychiatry Drug Discovery
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
Overview
We are seeking an experienced and highly motivated neuroscientist with strong drug discovery expertise to join our Discovery Psychiatry team. The successful candidate will apply drug discovery principles into exploratory through late-stage discovery programs and integrate knowledge across in vitro and in vivo electrophysiological approaches. Candidate must have a strong understanding of neural circuits, multimodal neurophysiological methodologies and translational utility. This role is an exciting opportunity to support psychiatry research from target validation, compound profiling, through clinical development in a dynamic, collaborative drug discovery environment.
Key Responsibilities
Establish Drug Discovery framework in Psychiatry portfolio
Contribute to the development and implementation of research workflows that integrate complex multimodal datasets
Ensure alignment of development and discovery with broader cross-functional program team goals
Support strategic decision-making in psychiatry drug discovery
Provide scientific guidance and mentoring to junior scientists and research associates
Qualifications
Bachelor’s Degree in Science related field with 16 years of related work; Master’s Degree Science or PharmD with 14 years of related work; PhD in Science or related field with 8 years of related work experience.
Industry experience within early discovery for Psychiatry
Demonstrated experience with neurophysiology and/or functional approaches, including experience in the design and execution of studies investigating synaptic and circuit modulation relevant to psychiatric indications
Strong ability to work in cross-functional teams and effectively communicate scientific findings to both technical and non-technical audiences
Desired Qualifications
Experience building translational frameworks or predictive approaches for functional biology data
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 this posting 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 and until 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 467 comparable Principal Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research roles across 55 biopharma companies.
Salary context
230 of 467 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 467 comparable roles
+ 15 more countries
Seniority mix
467 of 467 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
61 of 467 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.