Senior Machine Learning Research Engineer, SandboxAQ
Virtual Cell
£71.4-126k
Salary dependent on location + Equity
AI & quantum computing solutions
Open for applications
AI & quantum computing solutions
201-500 employees
Open for applications
£71.4-126k
Salary dependent on location + Equity
201-500 employees
Company mission
To help address some of the world's most challenging problems through AI and Quantum technology.
Role
Who you are
- Academic Foundation: Bachelor's degree in a scientific or quantitative field (Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, or related); an advanced degree (MS or PhD) is preferred
- Applied ML in Science: Demonstrated experience building and maintaining machine learning models in a scientific discipline in an industry setting, including taking models from prototype through validation and maintenance; experience in a life sciences setting is preferred
- Large-Scale Data Management: Required experience managing large-scale datasets and managing the training of models over them, including data ingestion, cleaning, versioning, and pipeline maintenance at scale
- Software Engineering: Strong Python programming skills and experience with modern ML frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, JAX) and experiment tracking/data versioning tools (e.g. Weights & Biases)
- Scientific Rigor: Ability to design sound evaluation methodology (e.g. train/test splitting strategies, held-out generalization tests) and to critically interpret model performance against meaningful baselines
What the job involves
- The AI Sim R&D team builds leading-edge ML and physics-based models ("LQMs") to advance drug discovery
- Within this team, AQCell is our virtual cell platform: it takes a cell representation (eg. Basal gene expression) and a perturbation descriptor (eg SMILES, dose, and time), predicts the resulting transcriptomic response, and maps that response through pathway activity to functional endpoints such as cell viability, IC50, and toxicity dose-response — helping drug discovery scientists understand the biological repercussions of a compound across the cell, not just whether it binds its target
- SMILES, dose, and time), predicts the resulting transcriptomic response, and maps that response through pathway activity to functional endpoints such as cell viability, IC50, and toxicity dose-response — helping drug discovery scientists understand the biological repercussions of a compound across the cell, not just whether it binds its target
- As a Machine Learning Engineer on AQCell, you will build and maintain the models and data infrastructure that power this pipeline
- You will work across large, heterogeneous transcriptomic and functional-endpoint datasets (e
- LINCS L1000, GDSC, Tahoe-100M, and DILImap), train and evaluate expression-perturbation and cell-viability prediction models over them, and help harden our evaluation pipeline and baselines so we can trust and improve model performance over time
- This role sits at the intersection of machine learning and biology, and offers the opportunity to shape how virtual cell models are trained, validated, and scaled toward real drug discovery decisions
- Model Development: Build, train, and maintain machine learning models for expression-perturbation prediction (e.g. transcriptomic response to a drug perturbation) and downstream functional-endpoint prediction (e.g. cell viability, IC50, toxicity dose-response)
- Large-Scale Dataset Management: Acquire, harmonize, and manage large-scale biological datasets (e.g. LINCS L1000, GDSC, Tahoe-100M, DILImap) — including schema harmonization, normalization, and de-duplication across cell, drug, and assay identifiers — and manage model training pipelines over these pooled datasets
- Evaluation & Baselines: Contribute to automating and hardening the end-to-end evaluation pipeline, including implementing robust statistical baselines (e.g. cell- and drug-conditioned mean baselines) to rigorously benchmark model performance
- Research Translation: Translate ideas from the scientific literature (e.g. transformer-based perturbation models, knowledge graph and GNN-based embeddings) into working, well-tested code integrated into our modeling framework
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with computational biologists, software engineers, and product stakeholders to ensure models are grounded in sound biology and are usable in real drug discovery workflows
- Communication: Clearly document methods, assumptions, and results, and communicate findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Our take
Spun out from Alphabet in 2022, SandboxAQ is a company providing AI and quantum computing solutions. Using cybersecurity modules that are in line with the "third quantum revolution", SandboxAQ can migrate enterprises to a higher level of security through the use of this cutting-edge technology.
The company's approach enables cross-pollination in a range of fields including physics, neuroscience, cryptography and more. Examples of its products are an end-to-end crypto-agile security suite, and quantum sensing solutions. Impressively, SandboxAQ has already partnered with Deloitte and Ernst & Young, as well as the US Air Force, to bring its quantum tech to the market.
Looking forward, SandboxAQ plans to build further relationships across the public sector, to help situate the company as one of the most "battle-tested" quantum providers on the market. The company has raised significant funds that will accelerate further product development, and in 2025 began partnering with the Department of War CIO to accelerate the discovery and inventory of cryptographic assets within the DoW's environment.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Jun 2026
$500m
GRANT
Jul 2025
$95m
LATE VC
Total funding: $1.6bn
Company HQ
Palo Alto, CA
Leadership
Jack Hindary
(CEO)Serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder of several tech companies. Also the author of 'Quantum Computing: An Applied Approach', one of the leading textbooks used in the field.
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