Characterizing biological foundation models

At Inceptive, you will help pioneer the next generation of AI-designed drugs, with the potential to positively impact billions of people, as part of a collaborative, antedisciplinary team.

We advance the state of the art in molecular design by training large-scale foundation models that enable cutting-edge generative approaches. Those models learn from diverse biological datasets and are refined through focused experimentation, large-scale training, and feedback from lab measurements. Progress depends not only on building better models, but also on understanding what they learn, where they fail, how data shapes their behavior, and how to evaluate them against biologically meaningful objectives.

You will collaborate closely with AI researchers and biologists to rigorously characterize the behavior, capabilities, and limitations of biological foundation models and their applications. You will identify valuable datasets, develop meaningful evaluations, investigate model behavior, and generate insights that guide model development, data strategy, and experimental priorities across the company.

Your Mission, should you choose to accept it

• Embody our vision of an antedisciplinary environment and embrace learning about areas outside of your traditional area of expertise
• Investigate how model performance changes with data quantity, data quality, dataset composition, and training methodology
• Develop biologically meaningful evaluations and benchmarks that measure progress toward therapeutic design objectives
• Design and execute rigorous experiments to understand the behavior, capabilities, and limitations of biological foundation models
• Identify sources of potential artifacts, bias, and noise in biological datasets
• Identify promising biological datasets for model training and evaluation, and develop computational pipelines for preprocessing, quality control, and exploratory analysis.
• Design studies, in silico or in the lab, that reveal what models have learned and which biological signals drive model behavior
• Work with biologists to formulate hypotheses and translate biological questions into measurable machine learning experiments
• Partner with AI researchers and engineers to prioritize research directions, data collection efforts, and model improvements
• Analyze, visualize, and communicate experimental findings to inform decisions across teams

Qualifications

• PhD in computational biology, statistics, physics, machine learning, or a related quantitative discipline, or equivalent practical experience, with record of publications or open source tooling in these fields
• Strong quantitative reasoning and statistical intuition
• Demonstrated ability to identify important scientific questions, design rigorous investigations, and draw reliable conclusions from complex biological data.
• Experience analyzing high throughput sequencing data (e.g. RNA-seq, functional genomics / transcriptomics, MPRA), with a focus on robust statistical analysis
• Experience collaborating closely with AI/machine learning researchers or applying machine learning or generative AI tools to scientific problems
• Familiarity with current AI/machine learning methods, including generative foundation models, representation learning, and model evaluation
• Familiarity with publicly available biological datasets and data derived from high throughput assays
• Capable programmer in Python and common scientific computing libraries
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex findings to audiences with diverse technical backgrounds
• Availability to work with team members across US and Europe, with meetings starting at 8am PT and ending at 7pm CET
• Readiness to travel several times a year for company retreats and business events
• We value the benefits of in-person collaboration and expect candidates to primarily work from our office locations

Preferred technical skills

• 3+ years of post-PhD experience in computational biology, biostatistics, machine learning research, or a related field

What we offer

• A competitive compensation package
• 30 days paid vacation per year
• Comprehensive health insurance for US based Beginners
• 401K with company match for US based Beginners and Direktversicherung for German Beginners
• Quarterly company-wide retreats
• Monthly wellness benefit
• Budget for multiple visits per year to our offices in Berlin, Palo Alto or Switzerland
• Learning & Development budget to attend conferences, take courses, or otherwise invest in your professional growth, as well as access to the Learning & Development platform EdX and Hone
• A buddy to help you get settled

*Varies by country and does not apply to internships

At Inceptive, we are creating tools to develop increasingly powerful biological software for the rational design of novel, broadly accessible medicines and biotechnologies previously out of reach. Our team brings together vast expertise in molecular biology, machine learning, and software engineering, and we are all working towards becoming antedisciplinary, meaning we deepen the knowledge we have in our area of expertise while also expanding our knowledge of completely new fields.

We approach our goals with a Beginner's mind, humbly and with fresh eyes, and aim to become the pioneers of a new discipline rooted in biology as much as in deep learning, whose impact will be realized together with out-of-the-box thinkers in business and entrepreneurship, defying established categorizations. We are building a company culture centered around growth, learning, and discovery. We believe in humility and open-mindedness in how we approach each other, as well as problems we don't yet have solutions for.

It is the policy of Inceptive to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital status, citizenship, national origin, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. Inceptive prohibits any such discrimination or harassment.

Inceptive is also committed to welcoming and providing accommodations to people with disabilities. Please let us know if you need any accommodations throughout your application process.