{"id":777189,"url":"https://alion.io/job/tabulabio-founding-machine-learning-scientist","title":"Founding Machine Learning Scientist","company":{"id":687213,"name":"Tabula Bio, Inc.","domain":"tabulabio.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/tabulabio","size_band":null,"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":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","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":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":159000,"max_usd":354000,"period":"year","method":"role_country_seniority_unknown","sample_n":4425},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-03-23T18:59:05Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-03-23","last_verified_at":"2026-10-29T23:49:00Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":220,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":219},"description":"About Tabula\nTabula is building an AI-first therapeutics company.\nWe are starting with bacteriophages, natural predators of bacteria, and building the models and experimental systems needed to design better therapies for hard-to-treat infections. The immediate problem matters on its own. Antibiotic resistance is a large and growing global problem, and new approaches are badly needed. But we also think this is the beginning of something broader.\nMost biotech companies are mostly biologists with a small computational team attached. We think that model is going to look dated. Our view is that drug and therapy discovery will become much more computational over time, and we are building Tabula around that belief from day one.\nTwo things make this a particularly interesting problem for machine learning. First, we own our data generation loop. We are not just consuming static datasets and hoping they are good enough. We can generate new data, learn from it, and improve the system over time. Second, phages are one of the rare places in biology where the path from model output to human impact can be unusually short. We picked this area in part because, relative to most of biotech, the feedback loop to real-world use is fast.\nOne way to describe what we are doing is simple: we are using machine learning to help design living therapies that can save lives. That sounds a little like science fiction, which is part of why we think it is worth doing. But it is also a very practical engineering and research problem.\nThe role\nWe are hiring a Founding ML Scientist to help build the machine learning core of the company.\nThis is a research-oriented ML role. We are looking for someone who is strong in modern machine learning, likes difficult technical problems, and wants to work on something where the connection between model quality and real-world impact is unusually direct.\nYou will work on model development, experimental design, evaluation, and iteration in close partnership with our wet lab. That collaboration is central to how we work. The lab exists in large part to generate and validate the data that improves our models. Over time, we expect that loop between model design, data generation, and biological validation to become one of the company’s core advantages.\nWe also picked this problem deliberately. A lot of biologically important ML work sits very far from actual deployment in humans. In many cases, even very strong model progress may take years to affect a patient. Phages are different. They give us a much shorter path from model output to something that can matter in the clinic. In bio time, that is unusually fast.\nBecause this is a founding role, the job is not just to run experiments inside an existing system. The job is also to help define what the system should be. You will help shape how we think about research direction, model quality, experimentation standards, and the relationship between the computational and biological sides of the company.\nWhat you’ll do\nDesign and run model experiments against difficult biological data\n\nHelp define the research roadmap for how Tabula’s models should improve over time\n\nWork closely with the lab to shape what data gets generated and why\n\nBuild better practices around experimentation, evaluation, and reproducibility\n\nContribute to technical decisions around model design, training, and research direction\n\nHelp a small team build an AI company whose output is not content or software alone, but real therapies for real patients\n\nWhat we’re looking for\nStrong background in modern machine learning and deep learning\n\nFluency in Python and PyTorch, plus comfort with the broader modern ML stack\n\nAbility to reason clearly about model architectures, training, evaluation, and tradeoffs\n\nGood research judgment about which ideas are worth testing and how to evaluate them\n\nComfort working in an early-stage environment where the problems are hard and the path is still being defined\n\nAbility to work closely with domain experts outside ML\n\nStrong interest in applying machine learning to a problem in the physical world, not just at the software layer\n\nWe do not require prior biology experience. In fact, we do not think that is the main thing that matters for this role. We already have biology expertise in the company. What we need here is someone who brings strong ML judgment, learns quickly, and is excited to work closely with scientists on a hard interdisciplinary problem.\nYou might be a fit if\nYou have done substantial model development work, not just built products on top of model APIs\n\nYou like designing experiments and learning from ambiguous results\n\nYou are excited by the idea of using AI for something more concrete than the usual software treadmill\n\nYou want your work to be tied to outcomes in the real world\n\nYou are interested in helping build a company where machine learning is central, not decorative\n\nWhy Tabula\nThere are easier problems to work on.\nThis one is technically hard, scientifically ambitious, and directly connected to the real world. It sits in an unusual spot: the work looks like serious machine learning work, but the output is not an ad system, a chatbot wrapper, or a productivity feature. The output is a therapy.\nThat means the feedback loop matters. The data matters. The experiments matter. And if we get it right, the result is not just a better model. It is a better way of building medicines.\nAnd we chose phages partly because they compress time. In many areas of biology, even important technical progress may take many years to reach a human being. Here, the path from model building to real human impact is much shorter. If we do this well, the work does not disappear into a long chain of abstractions. It can affect patients on a timeline that is unusually fast for biology.\nWe are still early. That is part of the appeal. The role comes with a lot of room to shape how the work is done and where it goes. If you want to help build an AI-first therapeutics company from the beginning, we’d love to talk.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6056,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Drug Discovery","Oncology Therapeutics"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-11T23:26:51Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":4,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.126,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":219,"expected_fill_days":24,"reasons":["conf:3","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/tabulabio-founding-machine-learning-scientist","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/tabulabio-founding-machine-learning-scientist.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-30T00:01:10Z","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":26,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-31T00:00:00Z"}},"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":687213},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=687213"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ftabulabio-founding-machine-learning-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%2Ftabulabio-founding-machine-learning-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%2Ftabulabio-founding-machine-learning-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/tabulabio-founding-machine-learning-scientist\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ftabulabio-founding-machine-learning-scientist"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":777189}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"tabulabio.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":777189},"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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