Associate Operations Analyst

Helical is building the in-silico labs for biology

Drug discovery still relies on wet labs: slow, expensive, and constrained by physical trial-and-error. Helical is changing that.

We build the application layer that makes Bio Foundation Models usable in real-world drug discovery, enabling pharma and biotech teams to run millions of virtual experiments in days, not years. Today, leading global pharma companies already use Helical, and we're at the start of a highly ambitious growth journey.

We're a founder-led, talent-dense team building a category-defining company from Europe. We care deeply about the quality of our work, move fast, and expect ownership. If you're excited by complexity, real responsibility, and shaping how a company actually operates as it scales, you'll feel at home here.

About the role

We're hiring an Operations Analyst to build out Helical's AI-first operations machine while we grow at incredible speed. You'll work with state-of-the-art tools and transform how work gets done across the company.

You'll report directly to the Chief of Staff & Operations Lead, own the operating rails (finance, vendors, compliance, people ops, automation), and partner with our fractional CFO on the finance backbone.

We're not hiring someone to do this job the way it has traditionally been done. The right person already thinks in terms of agents, production-grade workflows, and AI-leverage, and uses those tools to multiply what one person can do.

What you'll do

- Build the AI workflows that change how Helical operates - production-grade Claude agents and reusable Skills the whole company depends on day-to-day

- Build the automation backbone with Make.com - production-grade workflows the team depends on, not experiments

- Work with Helical's fractional CFO and build up the finance backbone of the company

- Spot what's broken in our operating rails and fix it before anyone asks — your judgment on what deserves attention is part of the job

- Own the new joiner experience end-to-end - make every joiner feel they belong from day one

- Lead vendor selection and negotiation end-to-end across the SaaS stack — you walk into the room ready to push back

- Design ops processes that scale from a 30-person team to a 100-person team

Currently a student or at the beginning of your career? See our Operations Analyst Internship.

Must-haves

- Bachelor's degree or equivalent — engineering, finance, biology, or entrepreneurship-related preferred

- 1 to 3 years of operations experience in a startup (Series Seed to Series B preferred)

- Active daily user of Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or similar AI tools, and of at least one automation platform (Make.com, Zapier, n8n)

- Has shipped at least one production automation or AI workflow currently in use

- Has owned at least one high-trust workstream end-to-end (SOC 2, ISO, financial close, vendor consolidation, audit, or similar)

- Power-user of Notion and Google Drive

- Based in London with the right to work in the UK

- Obsessed with AI and the impact it's having on how people work. You see it changing the world, and you want to be part of implementing that change in a fast-growing company environment

- Strong written communication and execution discipline

- Comfortable owning ambiguous work end-to-end

- You want to work on AI's impact in biology and drug discovery specifically — not just any AI startup will do

Nice-to-haves

- FinOps or finance exposure (you've worked alongside accountants, run AP/AR, or have a finance background)

- Light scripting fluency (Python, JSON, low-code platforms)

- Biotech, pharma, or scientific context