{"id":2657380,"url":"https://alion.io/job/latchbio-bioengineer-lead-scientist","title":"Bioengineer, Lead Scientist","company":{"id":171847,"name":"LatchBio","domain":"latch.bio","url":"https://alion.io/company/latchbio","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":3,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"Science & Research","role_family":"Science & Research","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":95000,"max_usd":252000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":542},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-15T20:19:02Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-15","last_verified_at":"2026-10-17T17:46:12Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":1,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":1},"description":"Bioengineer L2, Lead Scientist Role Overview\nOverview\nMission: Measure and improve AI model performance in biology by engineering benchmarks and leading a team to deliver for frontier model labs.\nAs a lead scientist, you will sit at the heart of LatchBio's benchmarking team and report directly to our CTO. You will work closely with the therapeutics and drug development team, product engineering, and scientific leadership to build and scale benchmark and task production. \nResponsibilities\nBenchmark co-design: Map the \"space\" of your domain knowledge into a taxonomy of benchmarks, and co-author and release them for frontier labs to monitor and improve model performance. See https://benchmarks.bio/ for examples.\n\nHands-on task design: Design the tasks and graders that compose benchmarks yourself; set task standards and rubric quality for the team. Essentially, design the standards for what great is.\n\nProduction and quality: Once the team is in place, ensure the program meets volume and timelines agreed on with our partners. Volume is set per partnership and depends on its scope. The type of delivery may change by contract, eg. from eval creation to rubrics or preference labeling.\n\nQuality Review: Review the team's work before delivery. Beyond automated platform checks, this means you need strong judgement of scientific value, clear and professional writing, tasks that fit the contract's scope, and decision-making on whether a task teaches a real, transferable skill. You will also design and decide on quality and review standards for different types of work.\n\nTeam mentorship & leadership: Lead a team of up to 7 scientists. Coordinate onboarding, 1:1s, feedback, and professional development. Be a reliable and communicative point of contact when they are blocked, technically or professionally. Advocate for team needs to leadership.\n\nOperations support: Be a force multiplier: Work closely with the engineering team to optimize compute and platform usage so individual scientists can focus on the science.\n\nTools and product engineering: With the engineering team, build tools that automate tedious parts of task creation, and act as a core user who gives feedback on new platform tools.\n\nStrategy: Lead domain initiatives such as data acquisition and roadmap definition, and help hire and close strong candidates. Communicate strategic initiatives directly with leadership to build consensus and execute across the organization.\n\nFirst 1-3 months\nYour rough milestones. Much of this work runs in parallel, so your timing will vary.\nMonth 1\nDeliverable: Meet the team and onboard to internal tooling. Design the structure of your first benchmark, in line with CTO and MTS-level thinking, and start drafting the first tasks. Support: Scientific and strategy leads (MTS)\nMonth 2\nDeliverable: Design and launch a benchmark. Begin to manage and onboard first L1 hires on the team. Support: COO and recruiting leads\nMonth 3\nDeliverable: With the MTS in place, engage a frontier lab partner to scale up work and start hiring to build out the function. Support: Head of Product and production leads\nWorkload and hours\nThis is a normal full-time role: about 40 hours per week. Nights and weekends are not expected. When crunches have happened (for example a first major contract), we adjusted quotas. The role is hybrid. Daily onsite presence is not required (though welcomed and encouraged), and some L2s are fully remote.\nYour role vs. the MTS role\nBoth roles work on and co-author gene therapy benchmarks. The difference is ownership: the MTS owns the entire business vertical - hiring, production, deliverables, timelines, and customer relationships - while you own hands-on management, scientific excellence and judgement, and tooling people rely on.\nBenchmark role: You co-author. The MTS leads or co-authors.\nCustomer contact: You support. The MTS owns it, on tight deadlines.\n\nAccountability: You own specific projects and benchmarks. The MTS owns the end-to-end business vertical.\n\nTeam: You onboard and mentor the team, and refer and help close hires. The MTS is directly responsible to hire, build the team, lead, and provide vision and strategy.\n\nOnsite: You do not need to be onsite daily, and remote is possible. The MTS is heavily onsite.\n\nAfter-hours: Not expected for you. For the MTS, late nights are common, for instance when a delivery is on the line.\n\nPath to MTS: there are no fixed promotion criteria, but we share an understanding that promotion to MTS is possible, based on performance aligning with the ability to execute on the responsibilities above consistently over time.\nRamp time and onboarding\nRamp to full speed takes about 3 months. Onboarding happens through the month 1 milestones above: meeting the team and getting set up on internal tooling, then learning by doing on live task generation work with team leadership. \nInterview process\n1: Introduction (30m) - logistics - Recruiting\n2: Take-home evaluation project (~2 hours) - MTS\n3: Technical interview / live engineering session (1 hour) - MTS\n4: Who interview (1 hour) - your experience - Founder\n5: Culture interview - COO \n6: Offer\nComp\nOTE $200k-$280k + Equity\nBenefits\nFull-time, in-person\n\nUnlimited PTO (truly)\n\nWork Visa sponsorship\n\nFlexible Spending Account\n\n401 contribution (no match)\n\nProfit Share + Ambitious Equity\n\nTeam-wide science reading groups\n\n100% covered Health, dental, vision\n\nRelocation Assistance (if applicable)\n\nLunch and dinner provided every workday\n\nWaterfront office in China Basin, San Francisco\n\nCompany-sponsored professional development\n\nFlexible working hours, so long as you maintain an onsite presence\n\nBest office dog: Nix","description_format":"text","description_chars":5672,"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":["Equity","Flexible schedule","Professional development","Relocation assistance","Unlimited PTO"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Bioinformatics","Scientific & Lab Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-15T23:23:18Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 5","filings_12m":5,"filings_prev_12m":1,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":112500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":30,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/latchbio-bioengineer-lead-scientist","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/latchbio-bioengineer-lead-scientist.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-17T20:16:17Z","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":3955,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-18T00:00:00Z"}},"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":171847},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=171847"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Flatchbio-bioengineer-lead-scientist"},{"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%2Flatchbio-bioengineer-lead-scientist"},{"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%2Flatchbio-bioengineer-lead-scientist"},{"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/latchbio-bioengineer-lead-scientist\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Flatchbio-bioengineer-lead-scientist"}]}