Jobs at Substrate Bio

Lead and build an end-to-end functional genomics vertical: scope and validate screening workflows (cell line engineering, perturbation libraries, pooled and single-cell sequencing), hire and manage scientists and technicians, co-design automation-ready protocols with engineering, and collaborate with foundation model partners to produce structured datasets for model training. Own quality thresholds, validation, customer engagements, and roadmap execution during manual, instrumented, and autonomous phases.

Lead and build Substrate's finance function end-to-end: controllership (close, payroll, audit), FP&A and financial modelling, cap table and debt management, CAPEX accounting, and designing usage-based pricing tied to billing and revenue recognition. Partner with founders on fundraising and commercial decisions, operationalise pricing with customers, and scale the finance team and systems.

Develop and validate end-to-end protein production workflows (DNA design, expression, purification, QC) by hand, build reproducibility and acceptance criteria, co-design automation-ready protocols with engineering/software teams, transition validated assays onto instrumentation, author SOPs, and support scale-up and team growth.

Build Substrate’s AI x biology research community from scratch: establish channels, produce technical content, run events, represent Substrate at conferences, and create feedback loops into product, science, and commercial teams. Develop London and San Francisco community footprints, measure engagement, and convert relationships into commercial pipeline inputs. Deliver a community playbook and sustainable content cadence while partnering closely with founders and cross-functional teams.

Lead Substrate’s end-to-end commercial function: convert pipeline to signed agreements, build account relationships and GTM segmentation across London and San Francisco, design deal structures and term sheets, establish CRM and reporting, represent the company externally, and produce a repeatable BD playbook to scale the team and node expansion.

Lead production development and architecture for intelligence software using LLMs and agentic systems. Ship end-to-end features (literature ingestion, gap identification, assay optimisation), stand up data capture infrastructure, and grow the intelligence team while coordinating with biology and operational engineering.

Develop, validate, and operate functional genomics pooled screens at the bench, from cell-line prep and library cloning to lentivirus production, screen execution and sequencing sample prep. Collaborate with automation, software and AI teams to make protocols automation-ready, author SOPs (Principal), validate equivalence on instrumented workcells, and maintain reproducibility and QC standards. Support customer screens and help scale the vertical from manual workflows to autonomous execution.