Computational and Experimental Scientist
clera · 5 hours ago
About the Role
Join a lean team at an early-stage AI-driven biotech company, owning computational and experimental work across protein design, laboratory testing, and model improvement. You will close the design-make-test loop, translating sequences into kinetics data and using results to improve the next round of designs.
What You'll Do
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Improve discrete diffusion and companion folding models for peptide and protein design, including architecture refinements and hierarchical reasoning.
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Operate and refine an inference platform, investigate usage patterns, and help scientists apply its outputs.
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Write, debug, and maintain production protocols for liquid-handling robots and plate automation.
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Run BLI and SPR workflows end to end, from assay design and immobilization through kinetic fitting and quality control.
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Develop clear protocols for external laboratories and operate internal screening instrumentation.
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Connect receptor biology, protein structure, scoring, and experimental results to identify failure modes and improve designs.
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Support scientific platform users and customer workflows, including personalized technical outreach and navigating biotech and pharma purchasing processes.
What We're Looking For
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Typically 3 to 11 years of relevant experience, including experience in biotech or life sciences software and customer-facing technical or commercial work.
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Hands-on wet-lab experience and a background in biology, biochemistry, or a related life science.
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Experience building or operating protein design, protein language, discrete diffusion, or structure prediction models in an experimental design-make-test cycle.
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Practical use of tools such as ESM, ProtT5, RFdiffusion, BindCraft, or equivalents.
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Personally developed and debugged production methods for Hamilton, Tecan, Opentrons, or equivalent liquid-handling platforms.
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End-to-end BLI or SPR kinetic fitting experience, including diagnosing assay and measurement failure modes.
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Python or equivalent scripting skills for automation and kinetic data analysis, plus an understanding of receptor biology, protein structure, and scoring.
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Experience operating inference systems at scale, improving model architectures, and working across experimental biology, bioinformatics, and machine learning.
Compensation & Benefits
Consulting compensation is $3,000 to $5,000 per month. Full-time conversion offers a base salary of $80,000 to $200,000 annually, depending on experience, along with equity and deal-contingent upside. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
Hybrid in New York, United States, with increased on-site presence expected as internal screening operations are established.