latchbio - AI Biologist - Structure Biology
Requirements
• PhD in structural biology, biophysics, biochemistry, or a related field. • Hands-on structural experience: you have built and validated models yourself, and you know what a good and a bad map, model and fit look like. • Deep expertise in at least one area (X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM, NMR/solution methods, or computational structural biology) and working fluency across the others. • Coding for structural data: you can compute contacts, superpositions, symmetry mates, map values and geometry from files without a GUI. • AI-ready from day one: daily use of Claude, Cursor, or similar agents, with the judgment to spot where model reasoning is technically correct but scientifically unsound. • Confidence to overrule an AI agent when the evidence demands it, and the openness to update when shown wrong. • Ability to calibrate confidence and communicate uncertainty rather than defaulting to binary calls. • Bonus: structural virology or antibody–antigen structural work (viral glycoproteins, epitope mapping, structural interpretation of escape) • Bonus: RNA structural biology, protein–RNA interaction analysis • Culture. We practice radical transparency: you'll know how the company is doing, what's working, and what isn't. It'll always be us against the problem, never each other. We're opinionated but respectful, and we bring solutions with our problems. You decide how you work; we judge the output. We use AI constantly, so what we reward is original expert judgment, not AI output passed off as your own. You'll start on the bench that fits your expertise and can move across teams as you build a track record. People who do well here and bring leadership experience can move quickly into senior roles. Outside of work, we have company outings most months, team off-sites, a Latch run club, cycling, boxing, ice skating, and soccer. Feel free to add to the list.
Responsibilities
• Test whether agents distinguish real structure from artifact or over-interpretation: unsupported ligands, register shifts, mirrored maps, crystal contacts read as interfaces, misdocked domains, and B-factors or occupancies treated as evidence. • Adjudicate ambiguous cases: decide what the map or measurement supports, where reasonable experts would disagree, and which additional data, such as a higher-resolution class, a solution-state measurement or a mutant, would settle the call. • Test whether agents choose the right representation and comparison for the question: the biological assembly versus the asymmetric unit, the right reference state, and which domain to superpose on. • Judge the agent • Interrogate agent reasoning step by step, and challenge conclusions that sound right but would not survive peer review or a validation report. • Pinpoint where agents go wrong: why a step fails, what an expert would do instead, and what evidence would change the call. • Score agent confidence, rewarding explicit uncertainty over overconfident calls on ambiguous structures.
Benefits
• Contract: 1099 (or W-8BEN internationally), no end date. • Pay: guaranteed for weeks 1-4 while you ramp, then paid per certified task. Most people in this position earn $120K–$180K+ (uncapped upside); certify twice the tasks/week, earn twice the pay that week. • Commitment: full-time, on your own schedule. Most of the team works 40+ hours a week. • Meetings: a few pod check-ins a week. The rest of your time is yours. • Location: remote (anywhere), hybrid, or onsite in SF. We prefer onsite. • Onsite perks: catered lunch and dinner daily, a waterfront office in Mission Bay, and monthly parking when available. • Work authorization: US citizens, permanent residents, and OPT holders. We can't support STEM OPT extensions or sponsorship.
Apply in one click
Upload My Resume
Drop here or click to browse · Tap to choose · PDF, DOCX, DOC, RTF, TXT