Careers

The scientists and software developers at the CCDC create and supply the database system storing the world’s entire collection of the 3D structures of chemicals. This system is used by thousands of organisations in over 70 countries. We’re a professional organisation, established as a not-for-profit company and registered charity. Although independent, we are a University of Cambridge Partner Institute. We offer an excellent benefits package and a competitive salary in a lively and friendly organisation of around 70 staff worldwide.

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Current Vacancies

CCDC UK

Head of Operations

We are looking for a highly organised, driven individual to join us as Head of Operations. They will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operational activities of the organisation and managing a team that provides user support, buildings and facilities management, product management, project management and professional service delivery. Working closely with the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Management Team, they will ensure the CCDC’s operations run smoothly and in keeping with our charitable aims.

Main duties include but are not limited to:

  • Overseeing the day-to-day operational activities of the CCDC with the direction of the Chief Executive Officer.
  • Providing leadership for the growth, delivery and execution of all professional services.
  • Running any building and facility projects and improvement plans and being responsible for the normal day-to-day running of the building/workplace.
  • Leading project management, ensuring all the internal work necessary to produce operational excellence is advancing including the delivery of CCDC’s digital transformation programme.
  • Leading and managing the Operations Management Team, chairing fortnightly meetings, allocating and monitoring actions.
  • Working with key internal and external parties to completely relaunch and build the CCDC’s new website inclusive of customer portals, automated support sections, and new and modern representations of all functions and their public facing materials.

The successful candidate will be educated to degree level or equivalent and be qualified in Project Management. They will have proven experience of working in a Head of Operations, Business Operations or similar leadership role and have excellent communication, organisational and interpersonal skills. Knowledge of Chemistry or Crystallography would be an advantage.

For more details on this opportunity, please see the full Job Description/Person Specification. If you would like to apply, please send your CV and covering letter to Petra Hales via careers@ccdc.cam.ac.uk.

UX - UI Designer

The CCDC is looking for a talented UX/UI designer to create amazing user experiences for software we develop to help researchers worldwide crack complex scientific problems. This is an opportunity for you to contribute to the advancement of science in a meaningful way by designing intuitive and novel interfaces that will enable data and knowledge from our comprehensive database of 3D chemical crystal structures to be exploited in academic research and across various industries.

We are looking for a team player who is able to extrapolate our user research into beautiful and intuitive interfaces. You will be challenged to design state of the art chemistry solutions alongside a team of highly skilled subject matter experts, software engineers and a UX researcher.

The successful candidate will work alongside CCDC's Software Development Team and our UX Product Owner to put in place design guidelines and processes that we can continue to work with seamlessly. We will expect the UI Designer to do a lot of information sharing and training of developers in-house. The UI Designer's responsibility will be to ensure that we have the capability to continue our progress with UI and UX Design on our future products.

Practically we will want experience in working alongside engineers who are developing our web products using technologies such as Typescript and REACT, as well as experience in developing a Design System for building a consistent, enterprise-level web framework.

For further details, please see the Job Description and Person Specification. To apply for this position, please send your CV and a covering letter to Petra Hales via careers@ccdc.cam.ac.uk.

Customer Success Manager (Europe)

We are looking to recruit a Customer Success Manager (CSM) to help us deliver our vision of shaping the future of structural science by accelerating the discovery and development of life-enhancing products. The successful applicant will be responsible for building direct relationships with CCDC customers within Europe, optimising their experience to ensure customers’ goals are met and they generate a measurable return on investment. This new position in our growing business development team is key for ensuring CCDC maintains a high level of customer satisfaction and retention amongst its pharmaceutical, biotech and academic accounts.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Advocating CCDC, its product and services to customers within Europe, and uncovering customers explicit needs to provide solutions for them
  • Onboarding new customers to optimise their experience, ensuring they are educated on the use of the products to best meet their needs and goals
  • Understanding customer workflows and matching their needs with CCDC products and services to deliver upsell and cross-sell opportunities
  • Promoting customer adoption of CCDC solutions, creating loyalty and retention within our customer base
  • Work with application scientists and product marketing to build awareness of and deliver training on new solutions
  • Capture knowledge of customers’ technical environments and coordinate resources to manage transition to the latest technologies
  • Coordinating with customer support, finance, admin, product development and marketing to resolve technical, scientific and business issues, ensure customer input into product development and to develop customers as reference sites

The ideal candidate will be educated to degree level or equivalent in chemistry, life or pharmaceutical sciences and be experienced in managing commercial relationships with customers. An understanding of drug discovery and development processes and how scientific software solutions can address business needs is essential. The Customer Success Manager will report to the Director of Business Development at the Cambridge (UK) office, but their location may be flexible within the UK or Europe. For further details on this opportunity, please see the Job Description and Person Specification.

To apply for this position, please send your CV and a covering letter detailing why you are interested in the role to Petra Hales, HR Officer, via careers@ccdc.cam.ac.uk. 

Head of Software Development

We are looking to appoint a Head of Software Development.  This is a key role that will manage software development in all its guises across the CCDC.  There will be an emphasis on ensuring that the skills within the organisation are deployed in the most effective way possible, utilising formal resource planning to allocate staff to important projects and formal monitoring of outputs against plan to report on progress. 

The Head of Software Development will:

  • Be accountable for the progress made with all development projects across the organisation
  • Lead and manage the Software Development team to deliver software and architecture that meets the end users' needs
  • Work closely with the Chief Executive Officer and Senior Leadership Management Team to develop and deliver strategic technological vision and direction for the CCDC
  • Put in place mechanisms to understand the state and progress of all software development work
  • Contribute to and collaborate with others over decisions made about development priorities
  • Liaise with Product Owners and Product Managers regarding the deployment of development skills across the organisation in a way that best meets priorities
  • Be responsible for implementing a consistent agile process for product development, including releases.

The successful applicant must be educated to degree level or equivalent and be able to demonstrate substantial experience in managing teams of software developers in an Agile environment. They must be able to successfully design and develop sophisticated software products and have hands-on experience with coding using multiple industry standard languages. Knowledge of chemistry and/or crystallography would be an advantage. For more details, please see the job description/person specification.

To apply for the position, please send your CV and a covering letter detailing why you are interested in the position to Petra Hales, HR Officer, via careers@ccdc.cam.ac.uk.

The closing date for applications is Wednesday 30th September 2020.

Head of Science

We are looking for an experienced leader to join us as Head of Science, a key appointment for the CCDC. The appointee will be responsible for the creation and delivery of the strategic, scientific vision and leadership and all aspects of the science for the organisation.  The Head of Science will work closely with the Discovery Science and Materials Science teams providing leadership and direction for the science behind our growing, non-profit organisation.

Duties include but are not limited to:

  • Working with the Chief Executive Officer and Board of Trustees to assess opportunities from new scientific and political development in order to establish and agree on a scientific policy.
  • Develop, implement and monitor the annual and medium-term scientific plans.
  • Propose and develop new scientific opportunities, which offer scientific benefits to the company, its users and partners, and that contribute to the CCDC’s charitable aims.
  • Lead the CCDC scientific team, fostering a team-based culture and ensuring positive interactions with other teams, CCDC software users and external collaborators.
  • Lead and manage the company’s scientific research and development work, proposing direction and ensuring it supports the company’s charitable aims.
  • Facilitate the presentation of new research and development at conferences and through the publishing of research papers in the field of Crystallography, Materials and Discovery science.
  • Manage the budgets for scientific projects and related development activities.
  • Identify scientific competitive threats to the underlying science base of the company and develop contingency plans and solutions in order to maintain CCDC’s place in the scientific research community worldwide.

The successful applicant will have a PhD in Chemistry or a related field or equivalent experience and be able to demonstrate successful senior scientific leadership experience. Excellent communication, presentation and problem-solving skills are essential, and the ideal candidate must be willing to undertake international travel.

For further details on this exciting opportunity, please see the Job Description and Person Specification. If you would like to apply, please send your CV and a covering letter detailing why you would be a good fit for the position to Petra Hales via careers@ccdc.cam.ac.uk.

The closing date for applications is Wednesday 30th September 2020.

CCDC Americas

The CCDC has, for many years, served the world’s communities of academic and industrial structural scientists by producing and supplying the authoritative, comprehensive crystallographic data resource – the Cambridge Structural Database (the CSD) – and associated molecular modelling applications, such as GOLD. The CCDC has established operations in the U.S. in order to provide a more local service to our users in the Americas.

Registered Charity No 800579

STRICTLY NO AGENCIES 

CCDC PhD Studentships

Thank you for your interest in the CCDC.  We don't have any open PhD studentships at this time, however, please check this webpage regularly as it will be updated as opportunities arise. 

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