Member of Technical Staff

Latent Labs Ltd.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private health insurance

Pension/401(K) contributions

Generous leave policies

Travel opportunities

Job summary

Latent Labs Ltd. is seeking a highly skilled machine learning researcher to apply generative modeling techniques in protein design. Join a dynamic team of experts working at the intersection of AI and biology to tackle global health challenges.

The role involves collaboration across disciplines to refine and evaluate proprietary AI models, contributing to impactful scientific advancements. Candidates should have a solid background in machine learning, coding, and data handling, along with a drive to innovate.

Qualifications

• Proven track record in generative modeling and machine learning projects.
• Strong coding skills with version control experience.
• Experience building ML data pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Apply generative AI models to design proteins for validation.
• Collaborate with teams to plan testing campaigns.
• Design benchmark tasks to assess model performance.

Skills

Generative modeling

Machine learning development

Data engineering

Optimizing generative models

Project ownership

Curiosity and adaptability

Thriving in dynamic environments

Job description

We are looking for a highly skilled machine learning researcher with strong experience in generative modeling. You will join an interdisciplinary team of machine learners, software engineers, biologists and bioinformaticians, jointly working to change the way that we control biology and cure diseases. This is an opportunity to help shape and grow an organization that advances artificial intelligence and applies it to longstanding scientific challenges. In your role you will apply, refine and evaluate our proprietary generative models with the goal of designing new proteins that are functional in wet lab assays.

Who We Are

At Latent Labs, we are building frontier models that learn the fundamentals of biology. We pursue ambitious goals with curiosity and are committed to scientific excellence. Before building Latent Labs, our team co-developed DeepMind’s Nobel‑prize winning AlphaFold, invented latent diffusion, and built pioneering lab data management systems as well as high throughput protein screening platforms. At Latent Labs you will be working with some of the brightest minds in generative AI and biology.

Our team is committed to interdisciplinary exchange, continuous learning and collaboration. Team offsites help us foster a culture of trust across our London and San Francisco sites.

We’re looking for innovators passionate about tackling complex challenges and maximizing positive global impact. Join us on our moonshot mission.

Who You Are

• You are a strong ML researcher. You have a proven track record of expertise in generative modeling. You have worked on notable machine learning projects, as documented by your contributions to widely used open source libraries, significant product launches or high impact publications, e.g. at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR or Nature venues.
• You are a skillful ML developer. You write ML code that is robust, tested and easy to maintain. You have experience using version control and code review systems. You are a fast prototyper and hacker who can also write production-quality code. You have experience running training and inference on cloud hardware, distributing data and models across accelerators.
• You are a data engineer. You have experience building ML data pipelines for the training and evaluation of deep learning models. You are able to analyze the raw data, construct appropriate dataset splits and build pipelines that are performant and scalable.
• You have experience in optimizing generative models. You have optimized the sampling characteristics of generative models, such as diffusion and language models, and you have experience with finetuning them.
• You are an owner. You have a proven track record of delivering successful commercial or research outcomes. You drive projects forwards from conception to completion and see them through with great focus and leadership.
• You are mission driven and curious. You are passionate about making a positive impact on the world, whether it's for patients, customers or beyond. You are motivated by the end goal and are flexible in adapting to different approaches and methodologies. You are relentlessly curious about problems, however small or big they appear.
• You thrive in a dynamic environment. You excel in a fast‑paced setting where goals must be achieved efficiently and urgently.

What sets you apart (preferred but not required)

• You have experience in computational biology or protein design. You have worked on ML‑driven projects in biology or conducted large scale bioinformatics analysis.
• You have a natural science background. You are academically trained in physics, biology, chemistry or other related fields.
• You have helped scale a young biotech before. You have worked in startups and helped the company grow.

Your responsibilities

• Apply our proprietary generative AI models to design proteins for experimental validation:
  • Closely collaborate with protein designers to generate designs using our proprietary generative AI models.
  • In collaboration with the biology team, plan wet lab testing campaigns and carry out model inference against biological targets to enable their testing in the wet lab.
  • Leverage our proprietary data to improve our models:
  • Leverage our experimental results to finetune our models and improve the next round of designs.
  • Collaborate in a joint codebase with other research scientists, engineers and protein designers, maintaining highest code standards.
  • Effectively translate between machine learning model development and experimental validation.
• Design informative benchmark tasks to track the performance of our models.
• Closely collaborate with protein designers, bioinformaticians and biologists to ensure the biological relevance of our model evaluations.
• Stay on top of the latest developments in ML.
• Gain a strong working understanding of protein and cell biology.
• Participate in knowledge sharing, e.g. organize and present at our internal reading group.
• Attend and present at conferences when relevant.

Apply

We offer strongly competitive compensation and benefits packages, including:

• Private health insurance
• Pension/401(K) contributions
• Generous leave policies (including gender neutral parental leave)
• Travel opportunities and more

We also offer a stimulating work environment, and the opportunity to shape the future of synthetic biology through the application of breakthrough generative models.

We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and we are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills.