Lead Bio Machine Learning Engineer

SR2 | Socially Responsible Recruitment | Certified B Corporation™; Oxford; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity upside

High ownership of projects

Collaborative environment with experts

Job summary

SR2 | Socially Responsible Recruitment | Certified B Corporation™ is seeking a Lead Bio-ML Engineer in Oxford to own the machine learning systems. This high-impact role involves working with biologists, designing models for drug discovery, and mentoring a small team. Ideal candidates will have a strong background in ML engineering, experience in life sciences, and production work with Python and ML frameworks. Join a small elite team focused on real-world therapeutic impact.

Qualifications

• Strong background in machine learning and AI engineering.
• Experience applying ML to life sciences and computational biology.
• Production experience with Python and ML frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end ML lifecycle including data, modelling, and deployment.
• Work closely with biologists to create ML solutions.
• Design models for genomics and drug discovery pipelines.

Skills

Machine learning / AI engineering

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Bioinformatics

Job description

I'm working with an early-stage biotech startup based in Oxford building machine learning-driven platforms for drug discovery. Their mission is to dramatically reduce the time and cost of bringing new therapies to market by combining computational biology, large-scale biological datasets, and modern ML techniques.

Backed by top-tier investors, they're a small, high-calibre team of scientists and engineers.

Overview

We’re hiring a Lead Bio-ML Engineer to take ownership of our core machine learning systems.

This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role where you’ll:

• Own the end-to-end ML lifecycle (data, modelling, deployment)
• Work closely with biologists to translate experimental problems into ML solutions
• Build and scale models across areas like sequence modelling, structure prediction, and multimodal biological data
• Shape the technical direction and ML roadmap
• Mentor and grow a small team as they scale

What You’ll Do

• Designing models for genomics, proteomics, and drug discovery pipelines
• Applying deep learning / foundation models to biological datasets
• Building robust, production-ready ML systems (not just research prototypes)
• Developing internal tooling for data pipelines, experiment tracking, and model evaluation

What They Want

Core experience:

• Strong background in machine learning / AI engineering
• Experience applying ML to life sciences, bioinformatics, or computational biology
• Production experience with Python + PyTorch / TensorFlow
• Track record of owning and shipping ML systems end-to-end

Nice to have:

• Experience with biological data (e.g. sequencing, protein structures)
• Familiarity with drug discovery or wet-lab collaboration
• Exposure to LLMs / foundation models in biology
• Previous startup or high-ownership environment

Recap

• High ownership: you’ll define and build critical systems from the ground up
• Real-world impact: your work directly contributes to therapeutic discovery
• Tight feedback loop: collaborate daily with domain experts
• Equity upside: meaningful stake in an early-stage company
• Small, elite team: no bureaucracy, just execution

Apply

Please apply here or reach out to me directly on LinkedIn/ via email ([e-mail]).