# Member of Technical Staff - Biological Engineering, ML, or Lab System > Acelegen · Menlo Park, United States · Full-time · Posted 2026-11-12 **Workplace:** on_site **Department:** AI and Engineering Department ## Description **Member of Technical Staff - Biological Engineering, ML, or Lab System** **About the role** Acelegen combines biology, AI, and laboratory automation to accelerate scientific discovery and drug development. Our platform connects protein evolution in living human cells, RNA sequence-to-function mapping, and AI-assisted laboratory workflows. We are seeking hands-on scientists and engineers to develop this platform and advance our discovery programs. You will own a defined technical problem from initial design through implementation, validation, and iteration. Depending on your background, your work will focus on one of the following areas. Candidates should **bring depth in at least one of the following areas** and be comfortable collaborating across disciplines. **1\. Member of Technical Staff — Protein & RNA Engineering** Develop experimental systems that measure and improve how proteins and RNA function in human cells. Responsibilities: - Design and execute protein evolution or RNA screening campaigns, defining functional objectives, experimental controls, and criteria for selecting promising variants. - Develop and optimize cellular assays that measure outcomes such as protein expression, binding, signaling, or cell fitness. - Generate and interpret sequencing, flow cytometry, or reporter assay data to connect sequence changes with biological function. - Investigate variability and failed experiments, improve reproducibility, and document protocols that other researchers can reliably execute. - Collaborate with computational scientists to select designs for testing and turn experimental results into datasets for model development.Relevant qualifications: - Hands-on experience in molecular biology and mammalian cell culture, with demonstrated ability to develop and troubleshoot assays. - Experience in at least one relevant area: protein engineering, directed evolution, CRISPR technologies, RNA biology, or pooled functional screening. - Familiarity with quantitative experimental analysis. Experience with primary human cells, sequencing library preparation, or high-throughput assays is a plus. **2\. Member of Technical Staff — Machine Learning & Model Training** Train and improve protein and RNA models using Acelegen’s experimental data. You will own model development from training data preparation and objective design through large-scale training, evaluation, and experimental validation. Responsibilities: - Develop training pipelines for pretraining, continued pretraining, and fine-tuning biological sequence models. - Design training objectives that connect protein and RNA sequences to experimentally measured function, including the effects of interacting mutations and cellular context. - Build training datasets from experimental screens, with rigorous filtering, normalization, versioning, and train–validation–test splits. - Run systematic experiments across model architectures, training objectives, data mixtures, and hyperparameters; use ablations to identify what drives improvements. - Optimize training efficiency and stability through distributed training, mixed precision, memory optimization, profiling, and reliable checkpointing. - Evaluate models on unseen sequences and experimental conditions, and work with scientists to validate model-generated designs and incorporate new measurements into subsequent training rounds.Relevant qualifications: - Strong Python skills and hands-on experience implementing and training deep learning models in PyTorch, JAX, or a comparable framework. - Practical understanding of transformer architectures, optimization methods, loss functions, and training dynamics, including diagnosing unstable training and overfitting. - Experience building reproducible training pipelines and running GPU-based experiments, with systematic experiment tracking and model evaluation. - Demonstrated ownership of a substantial model training project, from dataset preparation through evaluation, in research or production. - Experience with distributed training, biological foundation models, sequence generation, or learning from experimental feedback is a plus. **3\. Member of Technical Staff — AI Laboratory Systems & Automation** Build software and integrations that connect experimental planning, laboratory execution, and structured feedback. Responsibilities: - Develop tools that translate experimental plans into traceable workflows and capture their execution. - Build pipelines that connect protocols, video, timestamps, annotations, and assay results. - Integrate AI assistants with laboratory software and instruments to support researchers during experiments. - Develop evaluations for recognizing laboratory actions, detecting procedural errors, and assessing whether recorded evidence supports an experimental conclusion. - Debug systems in the laboratory and improve their reliability, usability, and recovery from failures.Relevant qualifications: - Strong software engineering skills, including Python, APIs, data pipelines, testing, and debugging. - Experience building systems used in real workflows, with attention to logging, traceability, and failure handling. - Experience in at least one relevant area: laboratory automation, instrument integration, AI agents, computer vision, or multimodal systems. Familiarity with wet-lab workflows is a plus. ## Requirements - A Master's degree in a relevant scientific or engineering field, or equivalent practical experience. - Evidence of completing substantial hands-on work, such as a validated assay, research project, model, or deployed system. - Ability to define milestones, investigate unexpected results, and communicate technical decisions clearly. - Careful documentation and a collaborative approach to working across biology and engineering. - Availability to work on-site five days per week. ## Benefits - Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision) - Retirement Plan (401k, IRA) - Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D) - Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays) - Stock Option Plan ## Apply [Apply at Acelegen](https://apply.workable.com/acelegen/j/EE0ED51547/apply) --- Powered by [Workable](https://www.workable.com)