Senior Bioinformatics Scientist

Basecamp Research; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Impactful mission

Collaborative culture

High growth

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Basecamp Research is seeking a Senior Bioinformatics Scientist in London to join the Genomics team. You will define data needs for AI models, ensure high-quality ground truth, and validate foundational model success with rigorous evaluations.

You will work with deep-learning, engineering, and translational teams to shape data requirements, provenance, and performance, contributing across the data lifecycle and ensuring reproducibility.

Qualifications

• You have demonstrated experience curating data specifically for life‑science AI, close to the models themselves.
• You’ve trained, fine‑tuned, or run inference on models to understand data inputs from the other side.
• Strong foundations in bioinformatics, sequence informatics, and standard genomic/protein toolchains.

Responsibilities

• Define what data and ground truth the models require and how to structure and label it.
• Design rigorous evaluations, metrics, baselines, and failure analysis.
• Fine-tune and evaluate genomic or protein models and ensure dataset decisions move model performance.
• Reason about biological meaning from foundational data to therapeutic context.
• Conduct sequence analysis, alignment, annotation, and evolutionary studies with critical scrutiny.
• Ensure reproducible workflows and version control so analyses can be rerun by the team.
• Maintain data provenance and lineage as core parts of datasets.

Skills

Bioinformatics expertise

Data curation

Sequence informatics

Reproducible pipelines

Education

PhD in a relevant field

MSc in a relevant field (1–3 years)

BSc in a relevant field (3+ years)

Tools

Genomic tools

Protein toolchain

Job description

About Us

Basecamp Research is dedicated to solving major challenges in the life sciences by exploring Beyond Known Biology. Our teams build frontier AI models using BaseData, the world's largest ethically-sourced and globally representative biological dataset. Our Global Research Team collects and curates our own biological data through partnerships with more than 152 organisations in 28 countries, giving its AI access to genetic diversity that doesn't exist for models trained on public database sources. This enables Basecamp Research to design novel protein sequences and biological systems that can accelerate therapeutic research and development.

In October 2024 we closed Series B and in January 2026 finalised pre-Series C investment from NVIDIA. With hubs both in London, UK as well as Boston, Massachusetts, USA and partners with biopharma companies and academic institutions worldwide, our work has been recognised with honours including Fast Company's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Biotech and the FT-backed Sifted AI100 list of Europe's leading AI startups.

At Basecamp Research, we pride ourselves on being a diverse, exciting, fun, and flexible place to work. Our team of biologists, engineers, ML scientists, field explorers, and operations specialists are united by a sense of adventure and the belief that nature has already designed the solutions to our planet's greatest challenges - we just need to go out and discover them! If you feel passionate about the power of biology, data, and AI to build a better world, we'd love to hear from you.

The Role

Our EDEN models, trained on the world's largest ethically-sourced biological dataset, have already designed novel antibiotics validated against priority pathogens in the lab, and prioritised vaccine targets faster than comparable genomic foundation models.

We are looking for a Senior Bioinformatics Scientist to join our Genomics team in London, working closely with our deep-learning modelling, engineering, and translational teams. You will focus on defining what data our models require, what “good data” means and validating through evidence the success of our foundational models.

You will be a first principles thinker capable of reasoning backwards: defining what data would train a capability, how to structure, and what evaluations would show the model is doing what we intend.

You can read more about EDEN's move into antibiotic and vaccine design.

What you’ll do

• Start from a modelling goal and work out the data behind it: what to assemble or curate, how to define ground truth and label quality, and how to build biologically sound splits homology- and structure-aware, not naive random so that what a model learns holds up.

• Design the evaluations that prove it: the metrics, baselines, and failure analysis that show a model is genuinely capable rather than exploiting leakage or a shortcut in the data.

• Fine‑tune and rigorously evaluate genomic or protein models, or work hand in hand with those who do, so that your dataset decisions are grounded in how they actually move model performance.

• Reason about biological meaning from foundational, evolutionary-scale data through to human therapeutic context: target validation evidence, indication mapping, peptide-level questions.

• Run and develop the genomic and protein analyses that depend on sequence analysis, alignment, annotation, comparative and evolutionary approaches with the scepticism to spot when a result is an artefact of the method rather than the biology.

• Work reproducibly, so your datasets and analyses are something the team can rerun and build on rather than a result that only ran once on your machine using whatever tooling fits, from workflow managers to containers, without needing to be a platform engineer.

• Hold the line on data integrity, treating provenance and lineage as first-class parts of the dataset because a model is only as trustworthy as the consented, traceable data underneath it.

About You

You have demonstrated experience curating data specifically for life‑science AI, so you understand what separates a dataset that trains a good model from one that quietly poisons it. That comes from having been close to the models themselves. You've trained, fine‑tuned, or run inference on them enough to know what a dataset looks like from the other side.

Your foundations are strong. You have core bioinformatics, sequence informatics and the standard genomic and protein toolchain, along with the judgment to know where those tools quietly break down, backed by sound software practice in reproducibility, version control, and pipelines.

You have direct experience in human research, functional genomics, or clinically relevant work, the kind where the biology connects to human health rather than sitting at arm's length.

You'll likely have a PhD in a relevant field, an MSc with 1‑3 years of relevant experience, or a BSc with 3 or more years.

Low ego, collaborative instincts, and a startup mentality. You're comfortable with ambiguity and happy to wear multiple hats in a team where everyone contributes towards the company's success.

What we offer in return

Impactful Mission: This is a rare chance to do work that genuinely matters. You'll join a talented, fast-moving team, access unique biological datasets at scale, and see your contributions shape real breakthroughs in AI and curative therapeutics.

Collaborative Culture: You'll be surrounded by world-class engineers, scientists, and researchers who care deeply about their work and about each other. With offices in London and Boston, we've built a flexible, cross‑functional environment where personal development and real ownership aren't just talking points.

High Growth: We truly believe in investing in our people. We make coaching available to team members during steep growth journeys and we have twice‑yearly promotion opportunities. People who are really successful here own it and go directly to solve problems at pace, and we ensure reward increases with impact.

Comprehensive Benefits: We've built a benefits package people value. That means competitive salary, equity, and private healthcare with no medical history exclusions - so strong that most employees' family members opt into our plan over their own. We also offer Carrot Fertility with IVF stipend, salary sacrifice pension, bike‑to‑work scheme, life insurance, and more.

We are committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of ethnic or national origin, race, religion, sex, age, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, gender identity or any other basis. If you have a disability or additional need that needs accommodating do let us know.