Senior AI Research Scientist, Generative Biology & RL

Astera Institute; Emeryville (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full benefits package

Company retirement plan

Robust GPU resources

Job summary

Astera Institute seeks a Senior/Staff AI Research Scientist for Polytope Bio residency to advance post-training AI models aligned with high-throughput biology. You will influence modeling, experiment design, and training strategy with ample compute and data resources.

The role offers potential leadership or co-founder opportunities in a pioneering, high-velocity research environment. You will work hands-on on reinforcement learning methods, generative AI models, and integration with wet-lab

Qualifications

• PhD in ML, computational biology, or related field with 1–2 years post-PhD research or industry experience.
• Experience training models from scratch and debugging end-to-end training runs.
• Hands-on with generative diffusion models and/or transformer architectures.
• Familiarity with reinforcement learning and preference-optimization methods.
• Strong research track record and ability to work in a small, autonomous team.

Responsibilities

• Drive core research and help shape the scientific vision for the project.
• Design and implement RL feedback loops translating measurements into rewards.
• Architect model training infra, run training loops, and evaluate performance.
• Bridge wet/dry lab work to create a cohesive measurement-learning system.

Skills

Research experience

Model training from scratch

Generative diffusion models

Transformer architectures

Reinforcement learning

Entrepreneurial mindset

Education

PhD in ML / computational biology (or related)

Tools

GPU clusters

Job description

Astera Institute seeks a Senior/Staff AI Research Scientist for Polytope Bio residency to advance post-training AI models aligned with high-throughput biology. You will influence modeling, experiment design, and training strategy with ample compute and data resources.

The role offers potential leadership or co-founder opportunities in a pioneering, high-velocity research environment. You will work hands-on on reinforcement learning methods, generative AI models, and integration with wet-lab