Senior Research Scientist, AI Bio Capabilities Verification

SecureBio; United States; On-site; USD 195,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive healthcare

Flexible work hours and PTO

Development opportunities with SponsS

401(k) match up to 4%

Referral bonus $5,500

Job summary

SecureBio in the Bay Area is seeking a Senior Research Scientist to design and run in vitro capability-verification experiments that test how AI models perform in real biology. You will shape study design, ensure rigor, and oversee a wet-lab team building out a new BSL-2 facility.

You’ll work with a multidisciplinary group to translate verification results into in silico correlates, publish reports, and contribute to dashboards used by researchers, AI firms, and policymakers.

Qualifications

• PhD in virology, molecular biology, synthetic biology, protein design, or related field.
• Hands-on wet-lab depth with interface across disciplines.
• Experience with ≥ BSL-2 agents.
• Strong experimental design skills: power, controls, confound management.
• Calibrated judgment about biological risk.
• Ability to define novel methods for non-standardized work.
• Commitment to ethics, documentation, and reproducibility.
• Handling confidential biosecurity information with discretion.
• Alignment with SecureBio's mission.
• Practical experience with biological AI tools.

Responsibilities

• Design and run in vitro validations of capabilities for LLMs and biological AI models.
• Own experimental design rigor: power, controls, bias mitigation, replicability.
• Translate verification tasks into executable experiments using safe proxies.
• Assess results in the context of major threat models.
• Turn verification findings into in silico correlates with the evals team.
• Oversee wet lab technical team in implementation and execution of studies.
• Contribute to study design for AI uplift of biology research.
• Design demonstrations for policymakers and frontier labs, clearly presented.
• Contribute to reports and public dashboards on AI biology trends.

Skills

PhD in biosciences

Wet-lab depth

BSL-2 experience

Experimental design

Biological risk judgment

Novel method design

Ethics and reproducibility

Biosecurity info handling

SecureBio mission alignment

Biological AI tools

Python

R

Claude Code

Codex

Benchling

LIMS

Education

PhD in relevant field

Tools

Benchling

LIMS

Python

R

Claude Code

Codex

Job description

• Project/Division: AI, Foundational Research
• Start date: As soon as possible
• Status: Full-time
• Work location: In-person, Bay Area
• Approximate compensation: $195,000 - $300,000, based on experience
• Reports to: Wet Lab Lead

The role

SecureBio is hiring a Senior Research Scientist to design and run the in vitro capability-verification experiments that our Foundational Research team will use to establish how in silico model performance holds up in real biology.

Our in silico evaluations have become de facto standards, and frontier labs run them before releasing models to the public. Our work has been cited in model cards from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and has informed safeguards on frontier models. We are a member of the NIST US AI Safety Consortium and a partner to the European AI Office.

It remains an open question whether such digital proxies can truly serve to underpin pivotal, consequential decisions regarding biological risks in AI. That is the question that you will seek to answer.

The team

Our Foundational Research team builds the measurement tools for capabilities that do not yet have established methods. The capability verification workstream complements our work in uplift and hybrid evaluation development.

This kind of work is new: AI just may accelerate biotechnology like semiconductors did computing half a century ago. We think this demands a research facility with the creativity, flexibility, and resources to keep pace; a sort of Bell Labs for biosecurity. We are looking for someone with strong research taste who can work with a diverse team to design rigorous studies from scratch and rapidly produce results that are clear and convincing to AI firms, researchers, and policymakers.

We are currently building a BSL-2 lab and expanding the team that will work from it. You would join early enough to have a significant opportunity to shape both of these.

Responsibilities

• Design and run in vitro validations of specific capabilities that LLMs and biological AI models demonstrate computationally, on turnarounds short enough to inform pre-release decisions.
• Own experimental design rigor across verification studies: power, controls, bias mitigation, replicability, and confound management.
• Translate candidate verification tasks into executable experiments, including choosing proxy systems that are both informative about the capability of concern and safe to run.
• Critically assess results, and put them in the context of the major threat models.
• Work with the evals team to turn verification findings into in silico correlates, so that expensive wet-lab evidence becomes a cheap and repeatable measurement.
• Oversee wet lab technical team in the implementation and execution of studies.
• Contribute to specification and biological task design for studies of AI uplift of human performance of biology research.
• Design and execute demonstrations for policymakers and frontier labs, where the result has to be both rigorous and legible to a non-specialist audience.
• Contribute to reports, papers, and our public dashboard of trends in AI biology capabilities.

Qualifications and Skills

A strong candidate would have the following qualifications:

• A PhD in virology, molecular biology, synthetic biology, protein design, or a closely related field, plus several years of post-PhD experience. We will consider equivalent depth from other paths, but we expect most strong applicants to hold a doctorate.
• Hands-on wet-lab depth in at least one relevant area, with the ability to interface across the others.
• Past experience working with ≥ BSL-2 agents.
• Strong experimental design skills: power analysis, controls, and confound management, applied to small-n studies.
• Calibrated judgment about biological risk.
• Comfort with novel, non-standardized work where you define the method, and with short, intensive project cycles that shift with model releases.
• Commitment to research ethics, documentation, and reproducibility.
• Comfort handling confidential and sensitive biosecurity information with discretion.
• Alignment with SecureBio's mission of preventing catastrophic pandemics.
• Practical experience with biological AI tools (protein design models, sequence models, or similar).

Preferred

• Experience in a biotech startup or other setting where you built a capability from nothing.
• Enough programming ability to run and iterate evaluations yourself; working fluency in Python or R.
• Experience with Benchling or other LIMS software.
• Experience with liquid-handling automation, or with agentic LLM tools such as Claude Code or Codex.
• Familiarity with biosecurity policy, threat assessment, or counterterrorism work.
• Experience working with AI developers, or in a regulated or NDA-heavy environment.

About SecureBio

Joining SecureBio means joining a mission-driven international team dedicated to protecting the world from biological threats. Through in-house research and development and collaborations with experts across academia, industry, and government, we build the tools, technologies, and institutions the world needs to be secure against future biotechnology.

Major projects by the SecureBio team include SecureBio Detection for reliable pandemic detection and our work to understand and reduce biological risks from advanced AI.

Benefits

Our employee benefits reflect our belief in investing to build the strongest possible team, in which everyone receives the trust and support they need to excel. Our benefits package includes:

Comprehensive healthcare

Comprehensive healthcare coverage, including health, dental & vision insurance, as well as a yearly mental health allowance for every employee.

Flexible work schedule

Flexible work hours; unlimited paid time off (PTO) for all employees; and minimum 12 weeks fully-paid parental leave.

Development opportunities

Generous professional development opportunities, including fully-paid conference sponsorships and a yearly development allowance for every employee.

401(k)

Employer 401(k) match up to 4% of total salary.

Referral bonus

We offer a referral bonus of up to $5,500 to individuals who refer successful candidates for this position:

To receive these bonuses, we must reasonably believe that you were responsible for referring the candidate to us (e.g. due to you introducing them to us when we didn’t previously know them, or them mentioning you on their application as the reason they heard about the position).

• If you refer a candidate that we invite to an in-person work trial, you will receive $1,100;
• If the candidate accepts a job offer from us, you will receive a further $4,400, for a total of $5,500.

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