Senior Computational Neuroscience Modeler & Theorist

Astera Institute; Alameda (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Open Science Policy

Total compensation package

Job summary

Astera Neuro, part of the Astera Institute, seeks a Computational Neuroscientist to develop and lead research programs on the representations and dynamics underlying conscious access, integrating theory, large-scale neural data, and ML.

You will collaborate with experimentalists and engineers, publish findings, and contribute to open science; senior roles include mentoring and shaping the lab's direction.

The role offers a competitive compensation package and a collaborative environment.

Qualifications

• PhD with 3–12+ years in computational neuroscience or related field.
• Proven ability to lead a modeling project end to end.
• Deep knowledge of dynamical systems, fixed-point and attractor analysis.
• Fluent in Python and ML frameworks (PyTorch/JAX).
• Experience with large-scale neural data and spike-sorting pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Build models of compositional neural representations grounded in cognitive theory.
• Develop coupled dynamical-systems models of inter-areal interactions and test against multi-area data.
• Analyze fixed-point structures and stability landscapes of neural systems.
• Design experiments and perturbations, including closed-loop decoders.
• Integrate data across species into foundation models aligned to brain atlases.
• Collaborate with experimental teams to plan and run tests.
• Translate computational principles into NeuroAI architectures.
• Mentor engineers and scientists; contribute to hiring and culture.
• Contribute to publications, talks, and open data/tools releases.

Skills

Leadership of modeling projects

Dynamical systems analysis

Python programming

Large-scale neural data analysis

Education

PhD in computational neuroscience or related field

Tools

Python

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

Astera Neuro, part of the Astera Institute, seeks a Computational Neuroscientist to develop and lead research programs on the representations and dynamics underlying conscious access, integrating theory, large-scale neural data, and ML.

You will collaborate with experimentalists and engineers, publish findings, and contribute to open science; senior roles include mentoring and shaping the lab's direction.

The role offers a competitive compensation package and a collaborative environment.