Senior Scientist: Evolutionary Search & Autonomous Discovery

Flagship Pioneering Co-Op Program; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 208,000 - 286,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare coverage

Annual incentive program

Retirement benefits

Job summary

Flagship Pioneering is seeking a Senior Principal Scientist to invent and build the next generation of evolutionary algorithms for autonomous science. You will lead the development of population-based models, hypotheses, and representations and guide the technical direction of the PI platform.

You will work across evolutionary computation, Bayesian inference, reinforcement learning, optimization, and automated discovery, with significant latitude and impact as a senior IC in a fast-growing team.

Qualifications

• PhD in a quantitative field with strong research track record or 5+ years post-PhD experience.
• Deep expertise in advanced Bayesian causal modeling and/or evolutionary programming.
• Ability to design novel algorithms from first principles and implement them.
• Strong software engineering skills and ability to run large-scale experiments.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement algorithms for autonomously generating and evolving populations of candidates at scale.
• Develop diversity-preserving methods to ensure exploration of distinct candidates.
• Build Bayesian frameworks for evaluating and ranking candidates with uncertainty.
• Define quantitative metrics of diversity and quality across populations.
• Collaborate with research and engineering to integrate algorithms into closed-loop autonomous pipelines.
• Establish benchmarks and ablations to show improvements over baselines.
• Contribute to the team's scientific direction through publications and reusable artifacts.

Skills

Bayesian modeling

Evolutionary programming

Algorithm design

Software engineering

Scientific leadership

biology experience

Education

PhD in a quantitative field

Job description

Flagship Pioneering is seeking a Senior Principal Scientist to invent and build the next generation of evolutionary algorithms for autonomous science. You will lead the development of population-based models, hypotheses, and representations and guide the technical direction of the PI platform.

You will work across evolutionary computation, Bayesian inference, reinforcement learning, optimization, and automated discovery, with significant latitude and impact as a senior IC in a fast-growing team.