Scientist / Senior Scientist, Peptide Discovery

Basecamp Research; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 165,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Healthcare

401(k)

Life insurance

Job summary

Basecamp Research is seeking a proactive Scientist / Senior Scientist, Peptide Discovery to join our Boston, MA team. You will validate AI-generated peptide candidates through cell-based assays, including viability, immunogenicity risk, GLP-1R activation, and permeability, supporting multiple therapeutic programs.

Required are a PhD or MSc in life sciences with hands-on lab experience, strong mammalian cell culture, flow cytometry, and GPCR assay proficiency.

Qualifications

• PhD or MSc in a life-sciences field with hands-on laboratory experience.
• Strong mammalian cell culture experience including viability/cytotoxicity assays.
• Experience with flow cytometry, including antibody panels and reporters.
• Experience with functional or signaling assays (cAMP, GPCR) and GPCR assay familiarity.
• Ability to work independently on multi-step assay timelines.

Responsibilities

• Perform routine mammalian cell culture and maintain cell lines.
• Design and execute cytotoxicity/viability assays in 96-well format.
• Run hemolysis and cell permeability assays to assess peptide toxicity and membrane interactions.
• Support immunogenicity risk assessment using in silico tools or PBMC-based assays.
• Run GLP-1R activation assays and other incretin receptor assays.
• Help establish stable receptor cell lines and perform transfections as needed.
• Generate dose–response curves for potency and safety endpoints.
• Prepare peptides for testing and manage stock solutions.
• Support fungal susceptibility assays (MIC-style) for select pathogens.
• Document work in notebooks and contribute to reports and figures.
• Collaborate with AI/Computational teams to iteratively down-select candidates.
• Mentor junior staff and help set assay development priorities.

Skills

Mammalian cell culture

Flow cytometry

GPCR/cAMP assays

Peptide handling

Independent researcher

Education

PhD in molecular biology/biochemistry/genetics or related field

MSc with hands-on lab experience

Job description

About us

Basecamp Research is building frontier AI for therapeutic design. We believe the future of medicine lies in reprogramming the body to repair itself, and we design the models and the medicines to teach it how.

Our EDEN models are trained on BaseData, the world's largest proprietary genomic dataset, with over 10B genes collected through partnerships in more than 30 countries across all seven continents. This gives our AI models access to genetic diversity that doesn't exist in public databases, and enables EDEN to design cell and gene therapies, enzymes, and peptides directly from information about a disease. Our pipeline of EDEN-designed therapeutics, beginning with in vivo cell therapy, is advancing towards clinical development.

In September 2026 we closed an oversubscribed $140M Series C led by S32, with participation from NVIDIA, Anthropic's Anthology Fund, Catalio, European Tech Collective, Firebrand River Capital, King Philanthropies, NATO Innovation Fund, NVentures (NVIDIA's venture arm), Redalpine, Rockefeller Foundation, Singular, Sovereign AI and True Ventures. We have offices and labs in London and Boston, we partner with biopharma companies and academic institutions worldwide, and our work has been recognised by Fast Company's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Biotech, the FT-backed Sifted AI100 list of Europe's leading AI startups as well as Barclays Eagle Labs Ones to watch, AI100.

At Basecamp Research, we pride ourselves on being a lean collaborative and global team with extremely specialist and unique skills. Our biologists, engineers, ML scientists and field explorers are united by a sense of adventure and the belief that AI, biology and data, will result in new medicines for patients who have few options today.

The Role

We are seeking a highly capable and proactive Scientist / Senior Scientist, Peptide Discovery to join our Boston, MA team. This role reports to the Head of Gene Editing and Early Discovery and supports the experimental validation of AI-generated peptide candidates across multiple therapeutic programs — including but not limited to antifungal, antimicrobial, and cardiometabolic peptides — through cell culture-based functional, safety, and developability assays that directly inform our AI-guided peptide discovery pipeline.

Key Responsibilities

• Mammalian cell culture: Perform routine mammalian cell culture (e.g., HepG2, HEK293, CHO, or receptor-expressing stable cell lines).

• Cytotoxicity/viability assays: Design and execute cell-based cytotoxicity/viability assays (e.g., CellTiter Blue or equivalent) in 96-well format.

• Hemolysis assays: Run hemolysis assays using red blood cells to assess membrane-disruptive toxicity of peptide candidates.

• Cell permeability assays: Run cell permeability assays to evaluate peptide membrane interaction and barrier penetration.

• Immunogenicity risk assessment: Support immunogenicity risk assessment of peptide candidates, which may include in silico T-cell epitope prediction, PBMC-based cytokine release or proliferation assays.

• GLP-1R activation assays: Run cell-based receptor activation assays for GLP-1 and related incretin peptide candidates, including cAMP accumulation assays (e.g., HTRF, ELISA-based, or luciferase reporter formats) in GLP-1R-expressing stable cell lines.

• Stable cell line support: Support or help establish stable reporter/receptor cell lines (e.g., transfection, antibiotic selection, flow cytometry-based confirmation of receptor expression) for new peptide target classes.

• Dose-response analysis: Generate and fit dose-response curves for potency (EC50) and safety (LC50, hemolytic/cytotoxic thresholds) endpoints.

• Peptide handling: Prepare peptide stock and working solutions from synthesized peptides (crude and high-purity formulations) for cell-based testing.

• Fungal susceptibility support: Support MIC-style fungal susceptibility assays (e.g., against Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida albicans, Candida auris, and Fusarium graminearum) following established protocols, as a smaller part of the overall workload.

• Documentation: Maintain detailed, accurate lab notebooks and contribute to data summaries, figures, and reports.

• Cross-functional collaboration: Collaborate with computational/AI team members to relay experimental results that inform iterative peptide down-selection across therapeutic programs.

• Assay strategy development: Independently design cell-based assay strategies (including new assay development for emerging peptide targets or developability endpoints) and propose follow-on testing based on prior results; Senior Scientists additionally mentor junior staff and help set assay development priorities.

Required Skills and Experience

Experience: A PhD in molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, bioengineering, or a life-sciences related field, or an MSc with equivalent hands-on laboratory experience.

• Cell culture expertise: Strong, demonstrated hands-on experience with mammalian cell culture (aseptic technique, cell line maintenance, viability/cytotoxicity assays).

• Flow cytometry: Expertise in flow cytometry using both antibody panels and fluorescent reporters.

• Functional/signaling assays: Experience with cell-based functional/signaling assays (e.g., cAMP, GPCR activation assays, reporter gene assays); GLP-1R experience specifically is a strong plus but not always required if you have transferable GPCR assay experience.

• Microbiology (secondary): Basic familiarity with microbial/fungal handling, or willingness to be trained on it (not expected to be a core strength).

• Independence: Ability to work independently on multi-step, multi-day assay timelines.

• Hemolysis & Membrane-Toxicity Assays: Experience with hemolysis assays or other peptide membrane-toxic screens.

• Proteolytic & Serum Stability: Knowledge of how to set up assays tracking peptide half-life in human serum, plasma, or simulated physiological fluids.

• Permeability/Barrier Models: Experience with permeability/barrier models or membrane permeabilization assays.

• Immunogenicity Risk Tools: Experience with immunogenicity risk assessment tools — in silico epitope prediction software, PBMC-based assays.

Advantageous Skills and Experience

• GLP-1R / Incretin Assays: Direct experience with GLP-1R or other incretin receptor cell-based assays (cAMP/HTRF, luciferase reporter, or similar), or experience generating and working with stable receptor-expressing cell lines.

• Binding & Kinetics Expert: Experience running Biacore (SPR) testing to measure exactly how fast, how tightly, and how long our peptides bind to their targets is a bonus skill.

• Peptide Handling: Experience with peptide handling/reconstitution or synthetic peptide chemistry basics.

• Screening Throughput: Exposure to high-throughput or medium-throughput screening formats.

• Antifungal Susceptibility: Any prior exposure to antimicrobial/antifungal susceptibility testing (MIC/MBC) against fungal pathogens (e.g., Candida albicans, Candida auris, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or Fusarium graminearum) is a bonus.

• Mechanism-Driven Mindset: A great candidate won't just look at MIC numbers; they will want to know how it kills (e.g., cell wall disruption, membrane depolarization, or intracellular targeting). Understanding the mechanism of action (MoA) helps them design which secondary assays to run next.

• Gene Editing Tools Knowledge: Mechanistic understanding of gene editing tools, including nucleases, base editors, transposons, retrotransposons, and recombinases is a bonus.

• Technical Savvy: Familiarity with modern software and AI tools. You don't need to be writing code, but you should adopt an AI first mindset and we expect everyone at Basecamp Research to be intentional about how they use their time. If an AI agent can do that task, get the agent on it and save your headspace for informed discussions and effective decisions.

• Communication & Interpersonal Skills: Excellent communication skills with a talent for working with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. You can interface comfortably with software engineers, data scientists, biologists, product managers, and external partners, translating needs and keeping everyone in sync.

• Proactive Problem-Solving: A proactive, resourceful, and independent mindset. You take initiative to identify problems or inefficiencies and act on them. You're the kind of person who spots an issue and rallies the right people to fix it before it escalates.

• Adaptability: Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid change. Our environment evolves quickly - you should thrive in a dynamic setting and be flexible in adjusting plans, while maintaining a positive, can-do attitude.

• Ownership & Drive: High degree of ownership over your work. You care about outcomes and reliably follow through on tasks and take pride in delivering quality results.

What we offer in return

• Impactful Mission: This is a rare opportunity to do work that genuinely matters. You'll join a talented, fast-moving team, access unique biological datasets at scale, and see your contributions shape real breakthroughs in AI and curative therapeutics.

• Collaborative Culture: You’ll be surrounded by world-class engineers, scientists, and researchers who care deeply about their work and about each other. With offices in Boston and London, we've built a flexible, cross-functional environment where personal development and real ownership aren't just talking points.

• High Growth: We truly believe in investing our top talent, we make coaching available to team members during steep growth journeys and we have twice yearly promotion opportunities. People who are really successful here own it and go directly to solve problems at pace and we ensure reward increases with impact.

• Comprehensive Benefits: We've built a benefits package people value. That means competitive salary, equity, and healthcare so strong that most employees' family members opt in to our plan over their own. We also offer Carrot Fertility with IVF stipend, 401(k), life insurance, and more.

Salary range for this role depends on level, skills and experience (Scientist I/II vs. Senior Scientist): $110K - $165K base.

We are committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of ethnic or national origin, race, religion, sex, age, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, gender identity or any other basis. If you have a disability or additional need that needs accommodating do let us know.