Merck KGaA Posted October 20, 2026

Scientist, Preclinical Pharmacology - Neuroscience & Immunology

Billerica, Massachusetts, United States FULL_TIME
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About this opportunity

Work Your Magic with us!  Start your next chapter and join EMD Serono.

Ready to explore, break barriers, and discover more? We know you’ve got big plans – so do we! Our colleagues across the globe love innovating with science and technology to enrich people’s lives with our solutions in Healthcare, Life Science, and Electronics. Together, we dream big and are passionate about caring for our rich mix of people, customers, patients, and planet. That's why we are always looking for curious minds that see themselves imagining the unimaginable with us.

United As One for Patients, our purpose in Healthcare is to help create, improve and prolong lives. We develop medicines, intelligent devices and innovative technologies in therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Neurology and Fertility. Our teams work together across 6 continents with passion and relentless curiosity in order to help patients at every stage of life. Joining our Healthcare team is becoming part of a diverse, inclusive and flexible working culture, presenting great opportunities for personal development and career advancement across the globe.

This role does not offer sponsorship for work authorization. External applicants must be eligible to work in the US.

Your Role:

EMD Serono is hiring a Scientist II, Preclinical Pharmacology.  This position reports to the Principal Scientist / Lab Head and is accountable for the independent scientific execution of in vivo pharmacology studies supporting programs across immunology and inflammation (I&I), neuroscience, fertility and other therapeutic areas. This role contributes to translational PK/PD and biomarker strategies, executes disease-model studies across multiple therapeutic areas, operating with a high degree of technical independence.

Responsibilities:

Scientific & Pharmacology:

Establish, validate, optimize, and troubleshoot fit-for-purpose in vivo disease models, including acute and chronic disease-relevant models, to defined validation milestones and reproducibility criteria

Build and apply immunological and/or neurological disease models to evaluate efficacy, target engagement, pharmacodynamic response, and translational relevance of novel therapeutic approaches, delivering study-ready data packages on schedule and in compliance with protocol and quality standards

In Vivo Pharmacology:

Hands on execution of in vivo pharmacology studies in disease models, including dosing via IV, SC, IP, PO, ICV, and IT routes, blood and CSF sampling, tissue collection, and necropsy, delivering study-ready samples on schedule and in compliance with protocol and quality standards

Perform and support surgical procedures relevant to broad set of pharmacology assays, including but not limited to surgical models, ICV/IT administration, stereotaxic injections, surgical recovery monitoring, and clinical scoring, to define procedural and welfare standards

Support in vivo pharmacology studies by conducting broad, standardized assessments of functional, behavioral, and physiological endpoints across preclinical disease models, enabling robust evaluation of treatment-related effects

Support biomarker strategy execution, including fluid, tissue, molecular, inflammatory, and translatable biomarker readouts

Manage CRO partnerships and external study execution, extending the laboratory’s capacity and geographic reach, ensuring program timelines are maintained without compromising scientific standards

Champion IACUC & AAALAC compliance across the in vivo function

Translational PK/PD and Biomarker Support:

Conduct PK sampling in rodents, including plasma, tissue, and disease-area-relevant matrix collection to support exposure and target engagement assessments

Execute target engagement marker assays, cytokine/chemokine assays, and support histology/IHC coordination and molecular endpoint integration

 

Who You Are:

Minimum Qualifications:

PhD in Pharmacology, Neuroscience, Immunology, Physiology, or other life science discipline with 4+ years of drug discovery experience in a pharmaceutical or biotech industry setting

OR

Master’s degree in Pharmacology, Neuroscience, Immunology, Physiology, or other life science discipline with 6+ years of drug discovery experience in a pharmaceutical or biotech industry setting

OR

Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacology, Neuroscience, Immunology, Physiology, or other life science discipline with 8+ years of drug discovery experience in a pharmaceutical or biotech industry setting

 

Preferred Qualifications:

Familiarity with neurological or neurodegenerative disease models (e.g., dopaminergic lesion, alpha-synuclein models, neuroinflammation models)

Experience with advanced functional or behavioral assays relevant to at least one disease area (e.g., motor/cognitive for CNS, automated video tracking or home-cage monitoring platforms)

Significant experience with protein-based and molecular biomarker assays (Flow Cytometry, ELISA, MSD, cytokine/chemokine panels, target engagement markers, Olink, NULISA, etc)

Expertise in at least one of the following disease areas: immunology and inflammation, neuroscience and neurodegeneration, fertility, endocrinology or rare diseases

Pay Range for this position: $90,400 - $135,700

The offer range represents the anticipated low and high end of the base pay compensation for this position. The actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level of experience, education, skills, and other job-related factors. Position may be eligible for sales or performance-based bonuses. Benefits offered by the Company include health insurance, paid time off (PTO), retirement contributions, and other perquisites. For more information click here .

What we offer: We are curious minds that come from a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. We believe that this variety drives excellence and innovation, strengthening our ability to lead in science and technology. We are committed to creating access and opportunities for all to develop and grow at your own pace. Join us in building a culture of inclusion and belonging that impacts millions and empowers everyone to work their magic and champion human progress!

Apply now and become a part of a team that is dedicated to Sparking Discovery and Elevating Humanity!

Job details

Seniority
Not listed
Function
Clinical Development
Therapeutic area
Neuroscience
Location
Billerica, Massachusetts, United States
Employment type
FULL_TIME

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Clinical Development role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 1416 comparable Clinical Development roles across 105 biopharma companies.

1416Comparable roles tracked
1301Currently active
105Companies hiring similar roles
52Countries represented

Salary context

418 of 1416 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)

Peers share this role's job function. This posting doesn't list a seniority level, so peers aren't narrowed by seniority either -- the range below may span more levels than usual.

This roleSubject $90,400/yr – $135,700/yr
Lowest disclosed · Patient Safety, Medical Director · Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc (US) $0/hr – $0/hr (≈ $0–$0/yr)
Peer group range $0 – $468,000 (median $198,000)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 1416 comparable roles

United States738
India124
United Kingdom88
China69
Japan35
Poland33

+ 46 more countries

Seniority mix

967 of 1416 peers have a known seniority level

Manager276
Director236
Senior149
Associate Director118
Senior Director63
Associate40
Principal34
Executive/VP30
Intern/Fellow/Postdoc21

Therapeutic area mix

205 of 1416 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Oncology104
Immunology36
Neuroscience31
Cardiovascular / CVRM11
Respiratory9
Vaccines & Infectious Disease4
Dermatology & Aesthetics4
Ophthalmology3
Rare Disease2
Gastroenterology1

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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.

80%
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Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc (US) · Boston, United States · Director
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
80%
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Clinical Development, Medical Director- Neurology
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Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 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.