Principal Research Scientist, Isomorphic Labs
Machine Learning
3+ days a week in office
AI-driven drug discovery and development
Job no longer available
AI-driven drug discovery and development
101-200 employees
Job no longer available
3+ days a week in office
101-200 employees
Company mission
Isomorphic Labs' mission is to use AI and machine learning methods to accelerate and improve the drug discovery process.
Role
Who you are
- PhD (or equivalent) and significant further academic or industry research experience in a highly related technical field (machine learning or drug discovery)
- A consistent track record of credible machine learning research using deep learning techniques, including designing new architectures, hands-on experimentation, analysis, and visualisation
- Experience with project supervision, leadership, or management
- Experience with people management
- Solid understanding of linear algebra, calculus and statistics
- Experience using ML frameworks such as JAX, PyTorch, or TensorFlow, and scientific software such as NumPy, SciPy, or Pandas
- A passion for applying ML research to real world problems
- Grounded and original problem solver: Combines the best from industry with new ideas and creative approaches, taking well-informed risks to advance progress
- Motivated by purpose and impact: Self-directed, chooses the most effective path to maximise impact in pursuit of higher level purpose, operates at pace with a clear bias for action
- Experimental: Comfortable with ambiguity, embraces new ideas, responds quickly and adapts to maximise opportunities
- Collaborative and inclusive: Willing to go the extra mile, works beyond role remit and builds strong partnerships with a variety of collaborators
- Curious mentality: Strong interest in self-development, learns from setbacks as well as successes
Desirable
- PhD in machine learning or computer science
- Relevant research experience to the position such as post doctoral roles, a consistent record of publications, or contributions to machine learning codebases
- Scientific knowledge of biology, chemistry, or physics
- Experience working in a scientific environment across fields (particularly biology, chemistry, physics)
- Biological or chemical data and biological or chemistry software with real-world datasets
- Experience with ML on accelerators
- Experience in any of: large scale deep learning, generative models, graph neural networks, deep learning for drug discovery, deep learning for 3D graphics/robotics, real-world applied RL
What the job involves
- You will be instrumental in leading greenfield machine learning based research projects, building the models, and algorithms that will power our platform to transform the drug discovery world as we know it
- Operating in a highly creative, fast-paced and interdisciplinary environment
- Partnering with leading engineers and scientists to conceive, design, and develop pioneering machine learning algorithms to unlock new modelling and predictive power which will be critical to the organisation’s success
- You will draw upon your existing deep research and leadership experience whilst learning from those around you, to apply novel techniques and ideas to newly encountered computational biology ,chemistry, and medical research problems
- As a senior member of the ML research team, you will be creating and leading projects - bringing together a variety of disciplined scientists and engineers to pursue some of the most ambitious modelling problems with deep learning - as well as providing technical mentorship and people management for others in the ML community at Isomorphic Labs
- Contribute to our research directions in machine learning by using your extensive knowledge of the field to create world-leading ML algorithms for drug discovery
- Provide technical mentorship and guidance to the ML research community, advising on projects, and shaping our research roadmap based on your deep technical expertise
- Provide people management and developmental support to other ML research scientists
- Identify and create ML techniques and the required data to train
- Develop the architectures and training algorithms of machine learning models
- Analyse and tune experimental results to advise future experimental directions
- Iterate collaboratively, report and present research findings with scientists and domain experts, sharing your own demonstrated ability
- Suggest and engage in team collaborations to meet high-reaching research goals
- Create, lead, and run ML research projects, fostering collaborative and diverse teams to solve high priority modelling problems
- Cultivate a diverse and inclusive research culture
Salary benchmarks
Our take
The discovery of new drugs is essential for medical innovations, but the process is lengthy, high-risk, and expensive. This is due to manual research and analysis processes that are prone to human error and time-consuming workflows, raising the question as to whether AI could reduce these pitfalls.
Rather than bolting ML onto the existing drug discovery process, Isomorphic Labs is reimagining everything from first principles with an AI-first approach, leveraging machine learning to build predictive and generative models of biological phenomena to understand how novel drugs could perform. The company differentiates itself from other AI-driven drug discovery startups by being a direct subsidiary of Alphabet, with access to resources, computing power, and partnerships with teams within DeepMind.
AI-driven drug discovery itself may not be novel, but the approach the company is taking, as well as its direct links with Alphabet, Google, and DeepMind present great potential for the company to disrupt the market with the best talent and technology. For example, 2023 saw Isomorphic and DeepMind unveil Alphafold 3, an AI model that has the ability to predict the complex molecular structures of life's foundational building blocks, further adding to the anticipation in the industry for Isomorphic's future work.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
30% female employees
Company
Funding (1 round)
Mar 2025
$600m
LATE VC
Total funding: $600m
Company values
- Thoughtful: Thoughtful at Iso is about curiosity, creativity and care. It is about good people doing good, rigorous and future-making science every single day
- Brave: Brave at Iso is about fearlessness, but it’s also about initiative and integrity. The scale of the challenge demands nothing less
- Determined: Determined at Iso is the way we pursue our goal. It’s a confidence in our hypothesis, as well as the urgency and agility needed to deliver on it. Because disease won’t wait, so neither should we
- In this together: Together at Iso is about connection, collaboration across fields and catalytic relationships. It’s knowing that transformation is a group project, and remembering that what we’re doing will have a real impact on real people everywhere
Company HQ
London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Demis Hassabis
(CEO)Experience as Founder & CEO of Elixir Studios. Founder and CEO of DeepMind since 2010.
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