Principal AI Scientist (Polytope Bio)
Astera
Posted
Jul 29, 2026
Location
USA
Type
Full-time
Compensation
$250000 - $350000
Mission
What you will drive
- Co-direct the research program: shape scientific vision, research direction, and technical execution.
- Develop RL feedback loop: design and implement model post-training methods that translate high-throughput biological measurements into reward signals for biological language models.
- Hands-on engineering: architect model training infrastructure, build and debug models, training loops, and evaluation metrics.
- Bridge wet/dry lab: partner with experimental team to ensure cohesive system design.
Impact
The difference you'll make
This role will enable frontier AI models to learn from real biological feedback, accelerating generative biology and unlocking new applications in drug discovery and synthetic biology.
Profile
What makes you a great fit
- PhD in machine learning, computational biology, or related field with 2-5 years of industry research experience post-PhD (or equivalent without PhD).
- Experience training models from scratch, owning training runs, and debugging them.
- Hands-on experience with generative diffusion models and/or transformer architectures.
- Deep familiarity with modern reinforcement learning and preference-optimization methods for deep learning.
Benefits
What's in it for you
Base salary of $250,000 to $350,000 during the residency. Potential for co-founding leadership role in a future spinout. Authorship of high-impact open-source datasets, methods, and models. Significant secured runway and dedicated GPU resources. Full benefits package including health insurance, company sponsored retirement plan, vision, dental, and more.