sandboxaq - Staff ML Research Scientist, Co-Folding and Affinity
Requirements
• World-Class Domain Expertise: PhD in Computer Science, Computational Chemistry, or a related field, with specific focus on structure-based deep learned affinity modelling a plus. • Proven Industrial Impact: At least 4 years of post-PhD experience, including experience in a professional industry setting, with a track record of delivering scientific impact that translates to product. • Domain-Specific Excellence: Proven excellence in co-folding and/or affinity prediction, as demonstrated by participation in industrial projects and/or academic publications. • Professional Engineering Fluency: Experience functioning within a professional software team, including proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks (PyTorch/JAX) at scale. • Postdoctoral Experience: In deep learned structure-based affinity models. • Commercial Success: Experience shipping commercial-grade software products within the biopharma or tech sectors. • Interdisciplinary Leadership: Relevant postdoctoral experience that demonstrates an ability to lead research at the intersection of AI and physical sciences. • Deep Biopharma Context: Direct experience working within drug discovery pipelines, understanding the specific challenges of lead optimization and hit-to-lead phases. • Technical Vision: Experience setting the technical roadmap for a specialized research group or project. • Research Visibility: A track record of contributions to the scientific community, such as first-author publications in top-tier venues like NeurIPS, ICML, or CVPR. • Agentic Coding: Deep familiarity with agentic coding tools (e.g. Claude code, Codex).
Responsibilities
• Pioneer Novel Architectures: Drive the research and development of next-generation deep learning models for protein-ligand co-folding and affinity prediction. • Architect Product Integration: Bridge from research to commercial utility by equipping SandboxAQ’s software products with advanced predictive capabilities. • Orchestrate Technical Strategy: Bring novel ideas and the content of scientific papers into the ideation, training, and benchmarking of complex models, ensuring they are optimized for large-scale, real-world drug discovery applications. • Champion Scientific Excellence: Act as a technical beacon for the team, representing SandboxAQ scientifically and shaping its vision externally and internally. • Scale High-Performing Teams: Mentor junior researchers and collaborate across engineering and product teams to foster a culture of technical rigor and rapid iteration.
Benefits
• UK Tier 1£112K – £168K • UK Tier 2£95.2K – £142.8K • At SandboxAQ, we are committed to competitive, equitable, and transparent compensation; we continuously benchmark our salaries and total compensation to premium markets to ensure our competitiveness. Individual pay within the above range is determined by job-related skills, experience, education, and geographic location. • With a focus on pay equity and ensuring opportunity for future salary progression, our typical practice is to hire within the first half of the base salary range for a given role and level. This approach allows us to reward performance and increasing expertise consistently as your career develops with us. • We use geographic pay tiers to reflect the pay differences in local markets:For the US: • For the US: • Tier 1: Applies to candidates within 50 miles of New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Wash D.C., Boston • Tier 1: • Tier 2: Applies to candidates within 50 miles of Portland, Boulder, Austin, Denver, Chicago, San Diego, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, LA • Tier 2: • Tier 3: Everywhere else in the US • Tier 3: • For the UK: • Tier 1: Applies to candidates within 50 miles of London, Cambridge, Oxford • Tier 1: • Tier 2: Everywhere else in the UK • Tier 2: • For Canada: • Tier 1: Applies to candidates within 50 miles of Toronto & Vancouver • Tier 1: • Tier 2: Everywhere else in Canada • Tier 2: • Upload your resume here to autofill key application fields. • Drop your resume here! • Parsing your resume. Autofilling key fields... • Please Note: To ensure that candidates select the most relevant jobs for their skills, we have set up limits to the number of times candidates can apply. The following limits apply to all roles at SandboxAQ: • Candidates may not apply more than 5 times in any 60 days for any job • Candidates may not re-apply to the same role within 30 days if not presented with an offer • or drag and drop here • If relevant, please share your google scholar/ research page. • We're genuinely interested in your personal take here. While we appreciate AI for its efficiency, your authentic voice matters most to us. Please share your thoughts in your own words—two to four sentences is perfect. Our team personally reads and thoughtfully considers every response. • Decline to self-identify • Hispanic or Latino - A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. • Hispanic or Latino • White (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. • White • Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. • Black or African American • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands. • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander • Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. • Asian • American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment. • American Indian or Alaska Native • Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino) - All persons who identify with more than one of the above five races. • Two or More Races • Hispanic or Latino • White (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) • American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino) • Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino) • I identify as one or more of the classifications of protected veteran listed above • I am not a protected veteran
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