Three Openings at Alpha-9
In October 2024, Alpha-9 Oncology announced an oversubscribed $175 million Series C financing led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Ascenta Capital, with participation from General Catalyst, a16z Bio + Health, RA Capital Management, Janus Henderson Investors, Delos Capital, Digitalis Ventures, Lumira Ventures, and abrdn Inc. The company is currently hiring, and the qualifications on those postings describe exactly the kind of scientist who can move a radiopharmaceutical pipeline forward, not the generalist biotech veteran the headline might suggest.
Alpha-9's careers page lists two senior-level positions — Director, DMPK and Associate Director, Regulatory Strategy, both in Boston — while third-party boards report a fluctuating count that makes it hard to tell which openings are genuinely active and which are stale. Applicora's tracking shows the Regulatory Strategy role posted 16 days ago; LinkedIn's Alpha-9 page lists one role posted "2 hours ago" and another "2 weeks ago." A third listing, Director, DMPK, rounds out what job-radar.com described as "4 open roles at Alpha-9 Oncology right now. 2 posted in the last 30 days," though that role doesn't appear on the careers page, suggesting it closed or lives on a board that hasn't been scraped. All three sit in Boston, where Alpha-9's company page has roughly 13,000 LinkedIn followers, and all were posted within the last month, timing that tracks the company's clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical pipeline and its "robust pipeline entering clinical trials."
Alpha-9's openings cluster around radiopharmaceutical development and regulatory translation, which means candidates should demonstrate measurable, role-specific scientific outputs rather than generic frontier-tech experience. The roles — one in the laboratory, one in regulatory affairs, and one in the Talent Network — each demand a different definition of "evidence of impact," and each rewards a different kind of prior output.
One tension persists: the careers page and third-party boards disagree on total open roles, and one of the three named positions isn't currently visible on the careers site. That gap likely reflects the lag between board scraping and direct listing updates rather than a contradiction in hiring intent.
What Each Role Demands
The Alpha-9 openings split along a drug-development axis: a laboratory role, a regulatory affairs role, and a Talent Network role. Each posting leans on a different definition of impact, and each demands a different kind of output.
Director, DMPK (Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics) is the computational and analytical counterpart. The Greenhouse listing frames the role as developing and executing DMPK and pharmacometrics strategies across Alpha-9's RLT pipeline, placing the job at the intersection of traditional pharmacokinetics and the peculiar kinetics of radioisotope-labeled scaffolds. Required qualifications include a Ph.D. in Pharmacokinetics, Pharmautics, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Pharmacology, Chemical Engineering, or a related scientific discipline, plus 10+ years of experience in pharmacometrics, quantitative pharmacology, DMPK, or clinical pharmacology within biotechnology or pharmaceutical organizations. The posting explicitly requires "significant, hands-on experience applying pharmacometrics, quantitative pharmacology, or DMPK to radioligand therapy or targeted radiopharmaceutical development," signaling that generic biologics or small-molecule DMPK backgrounds, while respected, are not sufficient on their own.
The Director role names specific technical expectations: experience with population PK, PBPK, and mechanistic modeling; integration of PK, biodistribution, quantitative imaging, and dosimetry into RLT development strategies; and leadership of external quantitative pharmacology activities with CROs and academic collaborators. Preferred qualifications include experience supporting RLT programs across multiple stages of development, including FIH, dose escalation, expansion, and later-stage studies, and experience contributing to RLT regulatory submissions and Health Authority interactions. The role's impact metric is clear: candidates must show they have built or scaled a DMPK function that supported at least one IND submission or clinical trial.
Associate Director, Regulatory Strategy sits closest to the platform's commercial translation. The Greenhouse posting defines the role as helping shape and execute global regulatory strategy, leading submission planning and execution, and supporting interactions with health authorities across Alpha-9's programs. Required qualifications include an advanced degree in a scientific, pharmacy, or related discipline, with 8+ years of relevant regulatory affairs experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, and strong experience supporting global drug development programs with hands-on experience across INDs, amendments, CTAs, and other clinical-stage regulatory submissions. The posting requires familiarity with FDA, EU, ICH, and other global regulatory requirements and their application to clinical development programs.
The Associate Director role lists specific regulatory frameworks as required: experience developing and executing regulatory strategies and working directly with health authorities, preferably across the US and international markets. Preferred qualifications include experience with expedited programs and a track record of managing regulatory submissions from pre-IND meetings through clinical trial authorization. The strongest candidates will have navigated the unique regulatory challenges of radioisotope-labeled compounds: radiation safety documentation, dosimetry reporting requirements, and the interplay between imaging and therapeutic dossiers.
The three roles diverge sharply in what they count as credible evidence of impact. The Director, DMPK, must show a function scaled to support regulatory submissions; the Associate Director must show regulatory pathways successfully navigated. Generic biotech or pharmaceutical experience, even at senior levels, does not substitute for modality-specific outputs in any of the three.
Alpha-9's Platform, From Virtual Screen to Isotope
Alpha-9 describes itself as a clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company, and its public materials reveal a development model that depends on computational methods applied to a traditionally chemistry-heavy problem space. The company's stated approach pairs a tumor-seeking molecule with a radioactive isotope, then optimizes each component — binder, linker, chelator, and radioisotope — through what it calls a bespoke, iterative process. That process is where the roles cluster: the work demands people who can move between molecular design, isotope handling, and the computational screening that informs both.
The clearest window into how Alpha-9 actually builds its pipeline comes from a September 2026 Nature Communications paper that reported researchers screened approximately 101 million compounds from the ZINC database against NSUN2, an RNA cytosine-5 methyltransferase whose overexpression drives tumor progression and therapy resistance. Rather than start with high-throughput biochemical assays — which the authors note require complex cofactors and RNA substrates — the team deployed a structure-based virtual screening workflow. The study used an AI-accelerated workflow with a CatBoost ensemble classifier trained on Morgan fingerprint descriptors, achieving robust performance (training: recall 0.87, ROC-AUC 0.89; test: recall 0.71, ROC-AUC 0.85). Multi-stage filtering identified 12,000 high-scoring compounds with binding affinities of −9.933 to −8.375 kcal/mol, and ADMET profiling yielded 34 drug-like candidates before 50-nanosecond molecular dynamics simulations validated binding stability of lead compounds ZINC-1000507789 and ZINC-1000507824.
That workflow illustrates the platform Alpha-9 is betting on. The company's website frames radiopharmaceutical development as a path to move "from bench to bedside rapidly and cost-effectively," and the NSUN2 work shows how computational screening substitutes for experimental throughput when assays are technically constrained. The approach also reflects the scarcity the paper highlights: structurally diverse chemical matter targeting RNA methyltransferases remains limited in commercial libraries, so virtual evaluation becomes a practical necessity rather than a nice-to-have.
The roles Alpha-9 is hiring for now align directly with this model. One strand of work focuses on expanding the radiopharmaceutical pipeline itself, optimizing binders and linkers against validated and novel oncology targets, managing isotope supply chains, and supporting clinical manufacturing. Alpha-9 has secured long-term access to high-purity, non-carrier-added Actinium-225 for its alpha therapy programs and partnered with CDMOs to sustain ongoing trials. Alpha-9 dosed its first patient in a Phase 1 trial of A9-3408, an Actinium-225-based agent targeting MC1R in melanoma, with data expected in late 2027.
The second strand centers on the computational discovery engine that feeds that pipeline. The NSUN2 paper makes the case plainly: computational screening lets Alpha-9 evaluate chemical diversity at scales that complement focused experimental campaigns. Alpha-9's leadership has pointed toward a broader shift, with commentary from industry figures suggesting that within five years cancer drugs will be discovered directly from human patient data rather than early in vitro experiments. That vision implies growing demand for people who can build and run those screening pipelines, interpret docking and simulation outputs, and translate them into candidate selection.
The third role bridges both strands. Alpha-9's iterative optimization process requires people who can close the loop between virtual hits and wet-lab validation; these people understand both the computational filtering that surfaces candidates and the formulation expertise needed to turn them into clinical-grade radiopharmaceuticals. The company's infrastructure, described as state-of-the-art with in-house formulation capability, only matters if someone can operate at the interface where those two domains meet.
None of this is generic frontier-tech experience. The platform Alpha-9 is assembling combines isotope chemistry, radiopharmaceutical manufacturing, and computational molecular screening in a way that rewards people who can point to specific outputs: validated docking campaigns, optimized radiolabeled compounds, or clinical-stage molecules that have cleared first-in-human dosing. The three openings exist because the company's strategy depends on keeping those three capabilities in-house rather than outsourcing them.
What Your Resume Must Prove
Researchers from the University of British Columbia and BC Cancer founded Alpha-9 Oncology in 2019, and it operates as a clinical-stage company developing imaging and therapeutic molecules for solid and hematologic malignancies. That origin story matters for what goes on a resume. A company born inside an academic medical center — not a Silicon Valley incubator — tends to weight demonstrable scientific output heavily, because the founders know what it takes to move a radiopharmaceutical from bench to bedside. Alpha-9's hiring screen rarely rewards generic frontier-tech buzzwords; it looks for evidence that a candidate has actually produced molecules, ran reproducible experiments, or built computational workflows tied to oncology or radiochemistry.
The company posts its roles on Greenhouse, the applicant-tracking system that parses resumes for keywords and structured fields. That detail alone shapes the resume strategy: a candidate's outputs need to be parseable, specific, and tied to domain vocabulary that Greenhouse's filters will catch. Vague descriptions of "worked on drug discovery" will not surface. Quantified, role-specific artifacts will.
For a radiopharmaceutical platform, the resume signals that carry the most weight cluster into a handful of categories. A publication in a peer-reviewed journal on targeted radionuclide therapy, molecular imaging, or nuclear medicine serves as direct evidence of domain depth, particularly one where the candidate appears as an author with a defined contribution, such as synthesizing a novel isotope conjugate or validating a PET tracer in a preclinical model. Patents are another strong signal: a granted or filed patent on a radiopharmaceutical composition, a targeting vector, or an imaging probe demonstrates that the candidate's work has reached a threshold of novelty and utility that a legal system recognized. Neither is guaranteed, but both are common currency in the UBC and BC Cancer ecosystems where Alpha-9's founders came from.
Software artifacts occupy a different but equally important tier. Alpha-9's platform work spans imaging and therapeutic molecule development, which means computational contributions (reproducible models for dose prediction, image analysis pipelines, or molecular docking workflows) are not peripheral. A candidate who can point to a GitHub repository with a documented, containerized workflow for processing PET data, or a published notebook demonstrating a quantifiable improvement in tracer binding affinity, gives a screening panel something concrete to evaluate. The key is reproducibility: an artifact that another scientist can run and verify carries far more weight than a description of a tool someone "helped build."
Experimental workflows round out the picture. In radiopharmaceutical sciences, the path from isotope production to targeted delivery to imaging readout involves a chain of steps, each with its own quality-control benchmarks. A resume that documents a specific workflow, for instance, "optimized a no-carrier-added Lutetium-177 labeling protocol achieving >95% radiochemical purity within 30 minutes", signals that the candidate understands not just the chemistry but the constraints of clinical translation: time, purity, yield, and reproducibility at scale. That kind of quantified outcome is what separates a candidate who has done the work from one who has only supervised it.
The tension is this: Alpha-9's founding roots and clinical-stage status mean the company is building toward human trials, where every molecule and every workflow decision carries regulatory consequence. A resume that shows outputs tied to GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) or GCP (Good Clinical Practice) environments, or that references experience with IND-enabling studies, will read as ready for that pressure. A resume that lists only academic publications without any indication of translational experience may clear the keyword filter but will struggle in the qualitative review, because the platform's strategy demands candidates who can operate at the intersection of discovery and development.
Where the research is thin, and it is, the assessment is that Alpha-9's hiring priorities converge on radiopharmaceutical platform and computational drug-discovery work, which means the bar for computational roles likely includes demonstrable model outputs: training curves, ablation studies, or benchmark results on oncology-specific datasets. For the radiopharmaceutical roles, the bar is more experimental: isotope yields, binding affinities, in vivo imaging results. Neither role rewards a generic "experience in biotech" line. The resume that passes the screen is the one where every bullet point names a specific output, a specific method, and a specific measurable result, because that is what a company founded by researchers, building molecules for patients with metastatic cancers, is actually looking for.
What Alpha-9 Looks For
Alpha-9's own materials lay out a fairly specific profile for the people it wants to hire, and the picture is narrower than what most general biotech postings suggest. The company's careers page describes three overlapping filters: scientific rigor, domain specificity in radiopharmaceuticals, and cultural fit around speed and ownership.
On the first filter, Alpha-9 said it evaluates "uncompromising commitment to rigorous scientific methodology, regulatory precision, and patient-centric drug development in radiopharmaceuticals." That language does not leave room for candidates who treat regulatory work as a checkbox. It frames regulatory precision as a core scientific competency, not a separate administrative function. For applicants, this means the cover letter or resume needs to show that they have operated inside regulated workflows, not just studied them.
The second filter is domain specificity. The job postings require 'substantial, hands-on experience in those domains.' That is a tall order, and the company reinforces it with a Ph.D. requirement in those fields, alongside 10-plus years of experience in those same areas within biotechnology or pharmaceutical organizations. These are not aspirational benchmarks. They are the stated floor.
The third filter is cultural. Alpha-9 said it is "seeking driven, creative, and entrepreneurial individuals to help shape our company." That phrase pairs with the counter-signals the company has flagged as disqualifying: "lacking urgency in a fast-paced biotech startup environment." The implication is that Alpha-9 wants people who self-direct and move fast, not those who wait for defined scope.
The company has also been explicit about what it does not want to see. Aggregated candidate feedback flags Alpha-9 as screening against candidates who downplay "the unique handling, safety, and supply chain complexities inherent to radiopharmaceuticals," who exhibit "sloppy scientific reasoning or misinterpreting baseline oncology clinical trial endpoints," or who signal a lack of urgency. These are not generic pet peeves. They map directly to the operational realities of a clinical-stage company building bespoke radiopharmaceuticals through peptide engineering and iterative design.
One procedural detail matters too. Alpha-9 said it does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. That means third-party recruiters and referral intermediaries are excluded from the pipeline. Candidates apply directly, through the company's own careers page or its listing on the a16z jobs board, where Alpha-9 posted a role 15 days ago as of early September 2026.
The compensation signals also carry information about what Alpha-9 values. Salary bands across its postings range from $101,000 to $122,000 at the entry-adjacent level, $135,000 to $169,000 at mid-career, and $196,000 to $243,000 for senior roles. The company lists benefits including a competitive salary, bonus, equity, 20 vacation days, 5 sick days, a technology allowance, and commuter reimbursement, with a $500 cash hiring bonus attached in some postings. These figures suggest the company prices domain expertise in radiopharmacology at a premium, and that the compensation structure itself is a signal of the seniority and specialization it expects.
| Level | Salary Range |
|---|---|
| Entry-adjacent | $101,000–$122,000 |
| Mid-career | $135,000–$169,000 |
| Senior | $196,000–$243,000 |
There is one tension worth flagging. While Alpha-9's careers page and the a16z listing suggest active recruiting, aggregated candidate feedback reported that there are "no active standard job postings listed right now" as of its most recent check. Whether this reflects a timing gap between when roles were posted and when the snapshot was taken, or a shift in hiring status, is unclear from the available sources. Candidates should verify directly on the company's careers page before investing effort in an application.
Alpha-9's stated criteria point to a candidate who combines deep quantitative pharmacology skills, comfort with the regulatory and supply-chain realities of radiopharmaceuticals, and the self-starting energy of a small-team environment. The company's own words leave little ambiguity about which qualities are non-negotiable and which are nice-to-have.
Across the functional areas Alpha-9 recruits in, Radiochemistry, Translational Biology, Regulatory, CMC/Tx, and Research Operations, the pattern is consistent. For candidates in radiochemistry and translational biology, the must-have evidence is direct laboratory experience with radiopharmaceutical synthesis or radioligand characterization, plus the ability to articulate how your work fed into candidate selection or dose optimization. Published methods, patents on peptide engineering or isotope-chelator conjugates, and demonstrated experience running imaging and therapeutic studies in tandem are useful differentiators. Common mistakes are specific here: downplaying the unique operational complexities inherent to these radiopharmaceuticals is a disqualifying pattern, and exhibiting flawed reasoning or misinterpreting key oncology clinical trial endpoints draws the same reaction.
For regulatory and research operations roles, the must-have evidence is familiarity with radiopharmaceutical regulatory pathways and the ability to connect preclinical data to clinical development strategy. Candidates who can show how their work accelerated a program toward the clinic, with specific milestones, timelines, or filing outcomes, signal the right fit. Differentiators include experience coordinating multi-site clinical supply chains for isotope-labeled compounds, since Alpha-9 lists Isotope/Clinical Supply as a dedicated department and the logistics of radiopharmaceutical supply chains are notoriously time-constrained. A common application mistake is a lack of urgency in such an environment, hard to fake when a hiring lead reads through your timeline descriptions.
For CMC, diagnostics-adjacent, and cross-functional platform roles, candidates need to show they have worked at the intersection of chemistry, manufacturing, and analytical development for radiopharmaceuticals specifically. The must-have evidence is process-development or analytical-methods experience tied to a radiolabeled product, with quantified yield, purity, or stability data. Differentiators include software artifacts or computational models that improved manufacturing consistency or imaging readout; this is where the AI-enabled dimension of Alpha-9's work becomes relevant to your application, since the company's platform language implies computational integration into drug design. A practical mistake applicants make is treating Alpha-9 like a general biotech and submitting a generic frontier-tech narrative; the company evaluates candidates on domain-specific rigor, not broad technical gloss.
Alpha-9 bars submissions from third-party intermediaries, so submitting through an agency without a signed agreement is not just ineffective; it is explicitly prohibited and the resume becomes company property with no referral fee owed.
Alpha-9's platform narrows a vast chemical library to a handful of validated leads. Its hiring screen applies the same rigor: millions of candidates, a few specific outputs that matter, and the rest filtered out. The candidates who get past it won't be the ones who've worked in biotech broadly. They'll be the ones who can point to a molecule they helped build, a dosimetry model they validated, or an IND their DMPK data supported — and those are the only outputs that survive the filter.
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