{"id":3340824,"url":"https://alion.io/job/dayhoff-labs-computational-scientist-biocatalysis","title":"Computational Scientist, Biocatalysis","company":{"id":4403902,"name":"Dayhoff Labs","domain":"dayhofflabs.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/dayhoff-labs","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":6,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"}},"role":"Science & Research","role_family":"Science & Research","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom","Cambridge, United States"],"countries":["GB","US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":49000,"max_usd":91000,"period":"year","method":"role_country_seniority_unknown","sample_n":131},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-05T22:41:08Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-05","last_verified_at":"2026-10-29T03:12:04Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":115,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":114},"description":"About us\nWe're reverse-engineering the origin of life - one of the great unsolved problems in science, and one we think AI finally makes tractable. Understanding this transition, from geochemistry to biochemistry, is what will let us orchestrate molecular networks and build systems that are more capable, adaptive, and efficient.\nIf we succeed, the applications are vast: catalysis, green synthesis, ab initio synthetic biology, programmable matter. Understanding and harnessing these processes could let ten billion of us thrive on this planet - and let life keep evolving beyond it.\nWe're a small, diverse team of AI engineers, computational scientists, and bench scientists. We hold ourselves to the rigor of a research institute, but we ship like an engineering firm. Global team, HQs in Cambridge, MA and London, UK.\nThe role\nWe're looking for someone to build and apply foundational models of enzyme catalysis, with use cases across pharma manufacture, agriculture, and industry. This is pragmatic computational enzyme engineering: you'll build internal models, fine-tune external ones like Boltz, RFdiffusion, and LigandMPNN, and reach for classical biocatalysis methods where they fit. There's no fixed pipeline to inherit - you pick the stack per project and answer for it, and you'll see your designs go into real wet labs on commercial timelines.\nWhat you'll do\nOwn the computational side of one to three commercial projects at a time, end to end: substrate analysis, starting-point selection, optimisation strategy, design rounds, in silico characterisation\n\nPick the tool stack per project, defend your choices on technical grounds, and revise them when the data says otherwise\n\nDesign and train novel architectures\n\nAcquire new training data, both computationally and experimentally\n\nWork closely with the wet-lab team on assay design, hit-call thresholds, and iteration\n\nEssential experience\nRole-description signals matter more than CV signals here - a PhD, where you trained, prior industry experience, and Nature papers are all non-essential. We care about:\nA track record of putting computational designs into wet labs and tracking what happened (the worked-to-didn't ratio matters less than whether you can explain the failures mechanistically)\n\nFluency across the protein ML stack (at least some of ESM, AlphaFold or Boltz, RFdiffusion, ProteinMPNN / LigandMPNN, docking) and comparable fluency in biocatalysis fundamentals (mechanism, kinetics, common cofactors, expression bottlenecks)\n\nGood taste in tool selection\n\nComfort talking to chemists and fermentation engineers about your model choices in their language\n\nHighly preferred\nExperience driving projects from substrate to characterised design without waiting to be handed the next step\n\nScepticism about your own outputs - you'll flag a junk prediction rather than over-claim\n\nLogistics\nCompensation is highly competitive. We're also able to sponsor visas for the right candidate.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2961,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Industrial Biotechnology","Artificial Intelligence","AI for Science"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-27T15:25:28Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":8,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.268,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":114,"expected_fill_days":30,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/dayhoff-labs-computational-scientist-biocatalysis","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/dayhoff-labs-computational-scientist-biocatalysis.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-29T03:12:27Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4831,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-30T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4403902},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4403902"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fdayhoff-labs-computational-scientist-biocatalysis"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fdayhoff-labs-computational-scientist-biocatalysis"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fdayhoff-labs-computational-scientist-biocatalysis"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/dayhoff-labs-computational-scientist-biocatalysis\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fdayhoff-labs-computational-scientist-biocatalysis"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3340824}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"dayhofflabs.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3340824},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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