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Employment Opportunities

Senior Software Developer

We are hiring a senior developer to join our web-based scientific software team. CDD is a growing, financially stable, privately held company. Our software helps scientists manage and collaborate around their drug discovery data. The innovative approach enabled by our technology dramatically improves the efficiency of the drug discovery process, an important goal affecting both humanitarian and commercial markets. Our software is used by leading researchers worldwide, many of whom are working on finding drugs for developing-world infectious diseases. We are currently working with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help leading tuberculosis researchers alleviate significant human suffering.

We are passionate about test-driven development, we've built one of the most interesting Rails apps around, we run CruiseControl.rb, we pair often, we plan and estimate in an agile way, and we hold monthly retrospectives.

We're looking for a great developer. You:

  • are technically excellent, smart, and push for a better way to do things
  • prefer to work in a small company environment
  • have a passion for TDD and agile development, while maintaining healthy skepticism and perspective
  • are interested (or even have experience/training) in our scientific domain, and want to learn more about it

If you join us, things you will work on include:

  • building a cutting-edge scientific collaboration platform used by industry, foundations and academia
  • improving the performance, scalability and architecture of our core application
  • writing code to perform statistical calculations to process and summarize data
  • developing rich interfaces for scientific data presentation and comparison
  • contributing to open source projects

Contact: Please contact our Director of Software Development, Moses Hohman, at with resume and cover letter.

Conditions: We consider applicants seeking full-time employment as a permanent employee. No recruiters, please. You must be local to the bay area or interested in relocation.

Community Support Professional

CDD is an expanding scientific software start-up with a growing researcher community around a new type of web-based database product to archive, mine and collaborate around data drug discovery data. We have an immediate opening in Customer (Community) Support at our main office in the San Francisco Bay Area (5 min from SFO). This important position will support both pre- and post-sales support efforts to primarily academic biologists and chemists that includes the following job responsibilities and qualifications. Priority will be given to candidates with domain relevant experience (Chemistry or Biology at another database vendor like MDL/Symyx, Accelrys, CambridgeSoft, IDBS, etc) demonstrating skills supporting real customer needs

Our software helps chemists and biologists manage and collaborate around their drug discovery data. We believe the innovative approach enabled by our technology dramatically reduces the risk and improves the efficiency of the drug discovery process, an important goal that affects both humanitarian and commercial markets. Our software is currently used by leading academic researchers (at Stanford, UCSF, UC Berkeley, etc.) working on finding drugs for developing-world infectious diseases. You will help our customers in their quest to alleviate significant human suffering.

The company is funded by Omidyar Network, The Founders Fund and other prominent investors.

Primary Responsibilities (Chemistry and/or Biology background presumed):

  • Proficient in Office, experienced in Excel
  • Routinely use excellent written and verbal communication skills
  • Manage multiple tasks and responsibilities in a changing environment
  • Great attention to detail
  • Take initiative and responsibility for customer satisfaction (or better yet delight)

Job Description:

Assist in supporting both pre- and post-sales. Help new customer prospects organize their data and upload it into the database. Teach people how to use the software and devise new upload methods to cut-down on pre-processing time. Schedule meetings and keep up communications with existing customers. Gather monthly reports for existing customers to ensure the product is meeting their needs.

  • Additional Plusses for supporting sales in addition to customers
  • Develop client accounts to ensure company sales and revenue goals are met.
  • Experience with personalized group emailing programs such as mail merge required
  • Help refine sales messaging to optimize sales process (maximize % closing and minimize sales cycle period)
  • Develop productive relationships and maintain contact with key account personnel.
  • Identify potential client's key players and influencers. Work to develop ongoing productive relationships with them.
  • Research customer's business situation and discover needs and objectives.
  • Market and prospect for new customers
  • Maintain company prospect active email lists
  • Collaborate with management to develop initiatives that could directly or indirectly effect or impact sales.
  • Gain a full understanding of all company product, services and capabilities.
  • Ensure that marketing and sales productivity is captured via timely reporting.

Qualifications:

  • BS degree (ideally in chemistry or biology)
  • Experience with technical (software) support ideally for drug discovery informatics
  • DB experience a plus (with Molecular Registration or SAR Databases a real plus)
  • Experience supporting accounts for customers using molecular registration or SAR database software at a vendor like MDL-Symyx, Accelrys, Cambridgesoft, IDBS, etc given top consideration
  • Strong work ethic and people skills (sensitivity to others)
  • Experience engaging scientists
  • Be available to work at company in Burlingame (5 min south of SFO off HWY 101)
  • Background in consumer products and a passion for the CDD product
  • Positive, high-energy, sales personality
  • Strong detail-orientation and great follow up skills
  • Excellent computer skills (mass mailings, sales CRM, Microsoft Office, web, etc.)
  • Excellent communication skills
  • Leadership, initiative, responsibility, and creativity are needed
  • A flexible team player

CDD offers a fast paced, exciting environment. We offer competitive salaries as well as health insurance, and equity participation – as well as the excitement of working in a fast paced environment with enthusiastic colleagues. What you do will really matter. Interested candidates should send resume, salary history and cover letter to

Software Engineering Intern (Summer 2009)

We have one open position for a software engineering intern to join our team for the summer.

Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. is a growing, financially stable, privately held company. Our SaaS application helps scientists mine and share their drug discovery data with collaborators, increasing the efficiency of their research, an important goal for both humanitarian and commercial pharmaceutical organizations. CDD recently received a $1.9MM grant from the premier foundation in developing world health to help leading tuberculosis researchers

As a software development team, we are passionate about TDD, we've built one of the most interesting Rails apps around, we pair a lot, we plan and estimate in an agile way, and we hold monthly retrospectives.

By interning with us, you will:

  • work on a real project that matters; write software that will be deployed live and be used by all our customers
  • get firsthand experience working on a live, multi-tenant, hosted application with very frequent updates
  • pair program with other experienced, smart, driven and fun developers. Learn a lot in the process
  • use tens of new technologies and languages (Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, RSpec, to name a few)
  • experience what it is to work in a very well organized software development team
  • help improve a cutting-edge scientific collaboration platform used by industry, foundations and academia
  • write code to perform statistical calculations to process and summarize data
  • develop rich interfaces for scientific data presentation and comparison

The ideal intern has some combination of the following:

  • currently pursuing a BS, MS or PhD in computer science (cheminformatics or bioinformatics a plus)
  • has a strong software foundation including OOP and algorithms
  • is proficient in at least one programing language (ideally Ruby)
  • has a passion for (or a very strong interest in) TDD and agile development
  • knows Rails or another comparable web application development framework

Interested candidates should send resume and cover letter to