Founding Scientist / Co-Founder
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
Required:
• 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
