Research Associate (RL Environments)

Anthrogen; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 70,000 - 105,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity 0.01-0.1%

Job summary

Anthrogen is building an autonomous biology lab in San Francisco. As a Research Associate, you will run molecular biology protocols on robotic platforms and generate demonstration data used to train policies for autonomous experimentation.

This role blends wet-lab work with teaching robots to perform experiments, improving protocols, and expanding the robot-automation library. Equity is offered as part of the compensation package.

Qualifications

• Hands-on molecular biology experience with strong lab technique.
• Gamer with fast hand-eye coordination and comfort with controllers.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and the pace of an early-stage lab.
• Excited by automating parts of your job to focus on uniquely human tasks.

Responsibilities

• Execute molecular biology protocols — cloning, transformations, PCR, protein expression and purification, assay development — to a high standard of reproducibility.
• Operate and teleoperate robotic systems to perform protocols, producing high-quality demonstration data.
• Collaborate with ML and robotics teams to surface failure modes, improve data quality, and expand the protocol library for robots to learn.
• Help redesign bench workflows so they translate cleanly to automation.
• Grow with a rapidly scaling autonomous lab, taking on more ownership as we scale.

Skills

Molecular biology

Lab automation

Python scripting

Gamer

Education

BS/MS in life science

Tools

Opentrons

Hamilton

Tecan

Job description

About Anthrogen

Anthrogen is engineering post-modality biology. Today’s modalities reflect historical contingencies in biological progress, not fundamental categories. We develop the AI systems that design modular biological machines — and the experimental infrastructure to instantiate them.

A core part of that infrastructure is a robotic lab that can run biology at a scale and consistency humans can’t match. To get there, our robots need to learn from the best: expert scientists demonstrating how real molecular biology gets done. That’s where you come in.

The role

As a Research Associate, you’ll run molecular biology protocols on our robotic platforms and, in doing so, generate the demonstration data we use to train policies for autonomous experimentation. You’re not just doing the science — you’re teaching our robots to do it. Every clean cloning run, every well-executed prep is a training example that moves us closer to a lab that designs and runs its own experiments.

This is a rare seat: half expert wet-lab scientist, half the person who teaches a robot to be one.

What you’ll do

• Execute molecular biology protocols — cloning, transformations, PCR, protein expression and purification, assay development — to a high standard of reproducibility.
• Operate and teleoperate our robotic systems to perform these protocols, producing high-quality demonstration data.
• Work closely with our ML and robotics teams to surface failure modes, improve data quality, and expand the library of protocols the robots can learn.
• Help redesign bench workflows so they translate cleanly to automation.
• Grow with a rapidly scaling autonomous lab, taking on more ownership as we do.

Who you are

• Hands-on molecular biology experience (BS/MS in a life science or equivalent bench experience). You’re meticulous, reproducible, and have excellent lab technique.
• A genuinely great gamer. Fast, precise hand-eye coordination, comfort with controllers and complex interfaces, and strong spatial reasoning — we’ll train you on the robots, and the skills transfer more than you’d think.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and the pace of an early-stage lab.
• Excited, not threatened, by the idea of automating parts of your own job to allow you to focus on the parts that only people can do. That’s the whole point, and you think it’s cool.

Bonus points

• Experience with lab automation or liquid handlers (Opentrons, Hamilton, Tecan).
• Robotics, teleoperation, or hardware tinkering experience.
• Some Python or scripting.
• A competitive or high-skill gaming background — speedrunning, fighting games, sim racing, FPS, whatever proves the hands.

Logistics

Onsite in San Francisco — the robots live here, and so should you.

Equity: 0.01-0.1%.