Principal Scientist (Comp. Bio/ML) - Director Level
At a glance
Director-level AI Research role at Helical. London · full-time.
Pay not stated AI Research salary
aimlroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Set scientific direction for model testing and applied work tied to drug development and translational research
- Turn foundation models into practical discovery workflows grounded in relevant scientific problems
- Work with research, Product and Business Development to shape biology and ML outputs into customer deliverables
- Coach junior colleagues while providing scientific leadership as the team scales
What you bring
- A relevant PhD focused on transcriptomics or genomics with ML, plus two years of industry experience
- Alternatively, a relevant MSc and five years applying ML to transcriptomics or genomics in industry
- You understand ML methods for biological data and have hands-on experience with PyTorch or an equivalent framework
- You have led small teams working toward defined project or roadmap goals
Who this fits
This is a senior individual-contributor role suited to someone who combines scientific leadership and strategy with mentoring. You’ll work onsite in London and partner across research, Product and Business Development.
From the employer
We’re looking for a Principal Computational Scientist/Director to help translate our foundation models into impactful, real-world discovery workflows. In this role, you’ll provide scientific leadership across model evaluation and applied use cases, ensuring our work stays grounded in the most relevant challenges in drug development and translational research.
You’ll join as a senior individual contributor with leadership and strategy experience at a point where the the team scales. You will act as a key scientific partner to our research team, mentor and support junior colleagues, and work closely with Product and Business Development to turn cutting-edge biology + ML into deliverables that matter for customers.
Requirements
- PhD in Computational Biology, Machine Learning, Bioinformatics, or a related field, with a strong focus on Transcriptomics OR Genomics + ML, and 2+ years of industry (non-academic) experience OR MSc in a relevant field and 5+ years of industry experience applying ML to Transcriptomics OR Genomics problems
- Strong understanding of ML/AI methods for biological data (e.g., transformers, VAEs, diffusion models, classical ML)
- Hands-on experience with modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch (or equivalent)
- Leadership experience with small teams to work towards defined roadmaps or projects
- Excellent communication skills — able to translate complex science into clear, actionable insights for technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Comfortable in a fast-paced, high-iteration environment, moving quickly from prototype → experiment → insight
- Strong passion for building at the intersection of biology and machine learning