Principal AI Researcher

OpenKrill; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Recursion is a clinical-stage TechBio company decoding biology to radically improve lives. We are seeking a Principal AI Researcher to join a cross-functional team of scientists, engineers, and drug hunters, advancing frontier research and end-to-end applications across discovery, design, and translation.

You will work at the forefront of AI-powered drug discovery and help turn real-world data into a discovery engine to close the loop of clinical care and drug discovery.

Qualifications

• PhD in ML, NLP, computer vision, or the equivalent practical experience.
• Passionate about real-world applications and impact.
• Strong verbal and writing communication skills.
• 10+ years of frontier AI research experience.
• Experience with large datasets and cross-functional AI projects.
• Experience in biomedicine and drug discovery a plus; willingness to learn a must!

Skills

PhD in ML/NLP/CV

Frontier AI research

Large datasets experience

Cross-functional AI projects

Willingness to learn

Education

PhD in ML, NLP, or Computer Vision

Job description

Your work will change lives. Including your own.

The Impact You’ll Make:

Human biology stems from four billion years of evolution, which creates a proliferation of complexity and heterogeneity. The combinatorial explosion of biological hypotheses easily surpasses the number of atoms in the universe. Meanwhile, medical discovery advances at the snail pace of clinical trials, each taking years and costing over $100 million. As we enter the era of precision health and try to tailor treatments for each individual, continuing on today's discovery processes is clearly unsustainable.

With the confluence of digital transformation and intelligence revolution, we have an unprecedented opportunity to develop a unifying biomedical world model by bridging virtual patient and virtual cell, and turning real-world data into a discovery engine to close the loop of clinical care and drug discovery. As a Principal AI Researcher, you will join our cross‑functional team of top‑notch scientists, engineers, and drug hunters in the quest of scalable biomedical discovery. You will work at the forefront of AI‑powered drug discovery, advancing frontier research and end‑to‑end applications across discovery, design, and translation.

The Team You’ll Join:

Recursion is a pioneer in AI‑native drug discovery. In the past decade, we have built an unparalleled array of infrastructures across drug discovery and clinical development, operating one of the largest AI compute clusters in biopharma, and spearheading industrial‑scale phenomics for perturbation data generation at cellular resolution, long before "virtual cell" entered the mainstream. United under the mission of “decoding biology to radically improve lives”, we offer a unique vibrant environment that features frontier research, industrialized wet and dry labs, and real‑world delivery, with close feedback loops and rapid iterations, much like a lean startup. You will join fellow experts across research and engineering, biology and medicine, business and operation, who are similarly committed to accelerating biomedical discovery and democratizing precision health for everyone in the globe.

The Experience You Will Need:

• PhD in ML, NLP, computer vision, or the equivalent practical experience
• Passionate about real‑world applications and impact
• Strong verbal and writing communication skills
• 10+ years of frontier AI research experience
• Experience with large datasets and cross‑functional AI projects
• Experience in biomedicine and drug discovery a plus; willingness to learn a must!

#LI-DNIThe Values We Hope You Share:

• We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust.
• We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.
• We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.
• We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.
• We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy—leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together.
• We are One Recursion. True cross‑functional collaboration is about trust, clarity, humility, and impact. Through sharing, we can be greater than the sum of our individual capabilities.

Our values underpin the employee experience at Recursion. They are the character and personality of the company demonstrated through how we communicate, support one another, spend our time, make decisions, and celebrate collectively.

More About Recursion

Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) is a clinical‑stage TechBio company decoding biology to radically improve lives. Recursion is advancing a portfolio of differentiated investigational medicines across its wholly owned and partnered pipeline in oncology, rare disease, neuroscience, immunology, and other therapeutic areas with significant unmet need. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, an AI‑native, end‑to‑end drug discovery and development platform integrating biology, chemistry, and clinical development into a unified intelligence system. Powered by proprietary multimodal data, purpose‑built AI models, and bilingual teams fluent in both science and AI, the Recursion OS is designed to translate complex science into medicines that matter — faster, better, and at scale — for patients who are waiting.

Recursion’s platform infrastructure is anchored in Salt Lake City, Utah and Milton Park, Oxfordshire, where its automated biology and chemistry laboratories generate proprietary data at industrial scale. Recursion also maintains offices in New York, Montréal, and London, three global hubs for talent and leadership at the intersection of AI and scientific innovation. Learn more at www.recursion.com, or connect on X and LinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation.

Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Recursion leverages AI in our hiring process. We use Greenhouse's Talent Matching AI technology feature to help review applications against the skills and experience we've identified as important for this role. It analyzes your resume and application responses to assess how closely your qualifications match our criteria - but all decisions are made by our human recruiters and hiring managers, including whether to move to the next phase of review. Talent Matching does not automatically advance or reject any candidate. By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have been informed about and consent to this use of the Talent Matching tool in our review process. Please refer to our Recursion Privacy Policy at https://www.recursion.com/privacy-notice/ for more information about our processing of personal data and your rights.