Scaling Experiments for AI-designed Medicines

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

Job summary

Inceptive in Palo Alto seeks a senior scientific leader in high-throughput and translational biology to drive AI-guided drug design efforts. You will lead a multidisciplinary team, ensure scientific rigor, and interface with the AI group to maximize data utility across platforms.

The role emphasizes scalable assay development across in vitro, cellular, and in vivo systems, team mentorship, and strategic execution within a fast-paced, collaborative environment at our lab location.

Qualifications

• PhD with 6+ years of post-PhD industrial R&D experience in drug development.
• Experience leading a data-driven lab of 10+ scientists.
• Proven ability to design and execute high-throughput, multiplexed assays.
• Strong background in molecular and cellular biology, experimental design, and statistics.
• Willingness to collaborate across US and Europe with early-morning meetings.
• In-person participation at lab location.

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, encouraging curiosity, rigor, and collaboration.
• Manage, mentor, and develop a multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers.
• Oversee development of validation assays to keep models and data generation aligned with downstream therapeutic applications.

Skills

High-throughput assays

Mammalian cell biology

Leadership / mentorship

Molecular biology

Python programming

Education

PhD in relevant field

Tools

Python

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