Leading Data-Driven Lab for AI Medicines

Inceptive; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Inceptive in Palo Alto seeks a senior scientific leader to drive high-throughput and translational biology in our lab. You will guide assay scale-up across in vitro, cellular, and in vivo systems and collaborate closely with our AI team to maximize data impact.

You will mentor a diverse team of scientists and engineers, ensuring rigorous scientific output in a fast-paced environment. PhD plus 6+ years in industry, with travel and early-morning meetings, are expected.

Qualifications

• PhD required with 6+ years of industrial research in drug development.
• Experience leading a data-driven lab of 10+ scientists.
• Proven ability to design experiments and guide translational biology efforts.

Responsibilities

• Lead development and scale-up of high-throughput assays across in vitro, cellular, and in vivo systems.
• Define and execute a lab strategy aligned with therapeutic and platform priorities.
• Champion an antedisciplinary culture and foster collaboration across scientific boundaries.
• Manage, mentor, and develop a multidisciplinary team to rapidly generate high-impact biological data for AI design models.
• Oversee development of validation assays to ensure data supporting therapeutic applications.

Skills

High-throughput biology

Mentoring

Data-driven decision making

Team leadership

Mammalian cell biology

Education

PhD in related field

6+ years post-PhD industrial R&D

Tools

Python programming

Laboratory automation

Statistical analysis

Job description

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.

Training on natural and experimentally-derived data is a core aspect of how our AI models learn to generate therapeutic molecules with exceptional properties. We invest deeply in building and scaling data sources to train and evaluate our models for maximal performance. At the same time, careful validation in orthogonal, translationally-relevant assays is crucial to orient our models.

We are seeking a senior scientific leader versed in high-throughput and translational biology to drive the continued growth and impact of our Palo Alto Lab. You will be a force multiplier for our scientists and engineers, ensuring a high standard of scientific rigor and output in a fast-paced, dynamic environment. You will also interface closely with our AI team to maximize the impact of internal data on Inceptive’s foundation models.

Your Mission, should you choose to accept it

• Lead development and scale-up of high-throughput assays across in vitro, cellular, and in vivo systems, leveraging multiplexed assays and laboratory automation
• Define and execute a lab strategy aligned with Inceptive’s therapeutic and platform priorities, while remaining flexible as modality and partnership needs evolve
• Champion an antedisciplinary culture, encouraging curiosity, rigor, and collaboration across scientific boundaries
• Manage, mentor, and develop a multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers that rapidly generates high-impact biological data to improve and validate AI design models
• Oversee the development of industry-standard validation assays to keep models and data generation aligned with downstream therapeutic applications

Qualifications

• PhD and 6+ years of post-PhD experience in industrial research applied to drug development
• Experience managing and mentoring a data-driven lab of 10+ scientists
• Experience using high-throughput and/or highly multiplexed assays to generate rich datasets from mammalian cells
• Proven ability to set scientific direction while also executing operationally
• Deep understanding of theory, techniques, and experimental design in molecular and cellular biology
• Visualization, analysis, and statistics applied to complex biological datasets
• Availability to work with team members across US and Europe, with meetings starting at 7am PT
• Readiness to travel several times a year for company retreats and business events
• We value in-person collaboration and expect candidates to work at our lab location

Preferred skills

• Translational experience with mRNA, oligonucleotides, or other genetic medicines
• Expertise in immunology and/or cell therapy
• Hands-on experience in RNA biology and biochemistry
• Scientific programming in Python
• Hands-on experience with modern data engineering workflows