Discovery Scientist, Evolutionary Biology and Machine Learning
Berkeley, California
Research /
Full time /
On-site
A Bit About Us:
We are Arcadia Science. Arcadia is a science company founded and led by scientists. Our mission is to transform evolutionary innovations into real-world solutions by openly developing more efficient, replicable, and sustainable ways to leverage the biology of diverse organisms. We expect scientists at Arcadia to openly publish their research in written form as clearly and expediently as possible to accelerate feedback and progress.
The Opportunity:
We are seeking an Evolutionary Biologist with experience in machine learning to join our Discovery Platform team. Arcadia’s Discovery Platform is inventing new approaches to studying biology with evolution as our guide. Our tools, methods, and frameworks probe the tree of life to identify innovations, novelties, and organisms that accelerate our basic and translational research.
This role will work at the frontier of machine learning and evolutionary biology to push forward Arcadia’s Platform technologies. This position represents a unique opportunity to creatively intersect ML and evolutionary biology in an applied setting with a focus on real-world solutions. The work will have a direct impact on many facets of work at Arcadia and will help shape the structure of our scientific efforts. Enthusiasm for, and participation in, open science is required as we routinely share our findings via our open source Pubs and code/data repositories.
Top candidates will have broad domain expertise in artificial intelligence (machine and/or deep learning), model design, and comparative biology. They will be characterized by their independence, scientific creativity, tenacity, collaborative nature, and ability to draw connections between disparate fields of study. We welcome and encourage candidates with a broad range of expertise to apply.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design architectures for predictive/generative evolutionary models
- Expand proof-of-concept results into scalable and generalizable approaches
- Engineer comparative datasets
- Work collaboratively to integrate ML approaches into diverse Platform efforts
- Synthesize ideas, data, and findings into fully open-access pubs and engage with the scientific community to maximize impact and garner feedback that improves the work
Qualifications
- Ph.D. or equivalent in biology with a focus on computation or a Ph.D. or equivalent in computer science with a focus on comparative biology
- Specialization in or experience with some combination of: deep learning, ML/AI, phylogenetics, evolutionary genetics, comparative/speciation genomics, comparative phylogenetics, trait evolution, natural selection
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration
- Fluency in multiple coding programming experience (e.g. Python, R, bash)
- Applied expertise in one or several frameworks for building ML/AI models (e.g., pytorch, tensorflow, JAX)
- Multiple computational infrastructures such as AWS cloud computing
- Has a commitment to sharing scientific processes and results openly and in a timely manner
Compensation:
Successful applicants can expect to be compensated between $130,000-180,000 with benefits and a highly competitive equity offering, depending on experience level. The position will require the individual to be on-site at our Berkeley, California headquarters.
Application Process:
Interested applicants should send a resume and a one-page cover letter that address their interest and qualifications for the position. When applying, be sure to answer all questions found within the online portal. Omitting questions will lead to elimination from consideration. Arcadia Science is an equal opportunity workplace; we welcome people from all backgrounds and communities. We provide competitive compensation and practical benefits to keep you happy and healthy so that you can do your best work. Please note that an offer of employment from Arcadia is contingent upon the successful clearance of a reference and background check.