Scientist - Computational Biophysics
Astera InstituteAI Research, company
Emeryville, United StatesCommensurate with experienceMid
Data & AI
About the role
TL;DR
Develop next-generation protein representations for dynamic structural biology.
- •We are seeking a scientist to join the diffUSE Project, which focuses on developing next-generation protein representations that bridge dynamic structural biology to downstream functional applications.
- •Key Responsibilities Build ensemble-aware protein representations that integrate PLM and LLM embeddings with experimentally derived structural heterogeneity for functional prediction Design, develop, and maintain large-scale bioinformatic pipelines capable of processing and managing complex, high-dimensional datasets Fine-tune or architect ML models to capture sequence-structure-function relationships, with a focus on dynamic and conformational features Synthesize diverse data sources spanning evolutionary history, binding affinity, allostery, and functional annotations to improve model performance and biological relevance Collaborate closely with experimental partners to ground computational representations in real biological measurements and ensure models are continuously refined against experimental ground truth Contribute to the broader diffUSE infrastructure, helping establish community-wide standards and tools for dynamic structural biology Requirements PhD in bioinformatics, computational biology, machine learning, or a related field Strong understanding of protein structure and function Demonstrated experience building large bioinformatic pipelines and managing high-dimensional datasets Proficiency in fine-tuning or modifying ML models (e.g., transformer-based architectures) Familiarity with protein language models (ESM, AlphaFold, etc.) is a plus Collaborative, team-oriented mindset with the ability to drive research questions from conception to execution
Required skills
PythonPandasNumPySparkAirflowdbtTableauPower BILookerSnowflakeDatabricksFivetranDagsterPrefectApache Kafka
Domain expertise
biotech
Benefits & perks
Benefits summary
Tech stack
PythonMLflowKubeflowVertex AIApache KafkaONNXJAXPandasNumPySparkAirflowdbtTableauPower BILookerSnowflakeDatabricksFivetranDagsterPrefectApache FlinkPostgreSQLMySQLMongoDBRedisElasticsearchDynamoDBCassandraSQLiteOracle