Job description
ABOUT THE ROLE
This is a rare opportunity to join as a Founding Scientist / Co-Founder at an early-stage startup at the intersection of AI and wet-lab biology, operating within the aerospace and defense sector. You will combine hands-on biological expertise with computational thinking to shape the company's scientific strategy and core technology — bridging laboratory work with AI-driven workflows to accelerate discovery.
This role is on-site in Germany. Candidates must be eligible to work in Germany without visa sponsorship.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Define and lead the scientific vision and research roadmap for early-stage AI + wet-lab products.
- Design and execute key experiments in molecular biology, biochemistry, or genomics to validate models and assays.
- Collaborate closely with engineers and ML researchers to translate experimental needs into computational requirements.
- Implement and oversee lab automation and data pipelines to scale experiments and improve reproducibility.
- Prototype computational tools and analyses; contribute code or notebooks integrating wet-lab data with models.
- Mentor and recruit early scientific hires; establish laboratory best practices and safety standards.
- Help navigate sector-specific constraints unique to aerospace and defense applications.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- PhD in Biotechnology, Genomics, Biology, or a closely related field.
- Senior-level research experience in molecular biology, biochemistry, genomics, biotech, or equivalent industry background.
- Demonstrated experience applying AI/ML to biological data (computational biology, bioinformatics, or similar).
- Experience in or familiarity with aerospace or defense domains, including an understanding of sector-specific constraints.
- Comfortable with computational thinking and coding; experience with ML is a strong plus.
- Must be eligible to work in Germany without visa sponsorship.
Nice to Have
- Prior experience at AI-for-biology companies, biotech startups, or similar industry environments.
- Hands-on lab automation experience.
- Prior founder experience or direct experience scaling early-stage teams and operations.
- Entrepreneurial mindset with comfort navigating ambiguity in a fast-moving startup environment.
- Strong cross-functional communication and collaboration skills. Ideal Background: Research or training at a leading institution or university, with a track record that combines rigorous wet-lab science and computational fluency. Candidates with backgrounds at defense-adjacent biotech firms or aerospace technology companies are particularly well-suited. WHAT YOU'LL BE BUILDING You will work at the frontier of AI-accelerated biology, helping to build systems that tightly integrate machine learning models with experimental wet-lab workflows. The team values intellectual curiosity, a bias toward action, and the ability to move fluidly between the bench and the codebase. LOCATION & WORK ARRANGEMENT
- Location: Germany (on-site)
- Remote: Not available for this role
- Visa Sponsorship: Not available — candidates must have existing eligibility to work in Germany