Senior/Principal ML Scientist, Translational Biology
San Francisco, CA$268k - $384kfull-timePosted 1mo ago
About the role
Senior/Principal ML Scientist building systems to assess mechanistic support for clinical programs using human data, grounded in mechanistic models and structured biological evidence, with forecasting and evaluation built at scale.
Responsibilities
- Build systems that assess mechanistic support for a clinical program. Take structured biological evidence and mechanistic models and turn them into assessments of established, assumed, or unexamined mechanisms.
- Ground mechanism in human data by analyzing genetic, expression, cohort and trial-derived evidence to determine presence, activity, and heterogeneity in the relevant patient population.
- Evaluate trial design against mechanism, including endpoints, biomarkers, dose/schedule, and eligibility/enrichment criteria, and encode assessments for scalable application.
- Build evaluations and forecasts of real program progression using information available at prediction date, with contamination-bound evidence.
- Co-design with ML scientists, mechanism scientists and engineers; translate model output into decision-making; publish findings on predictability from mechanistic and human evidence.
- Communicate findings clearly to technical and cross-functional audiences; support external scientific visibility through publications and presentations.
Qualifications
- PhD in a computational discipline with research centered on human biomedical data (translational bioinformatics, computational biology, biomedical informatics, biostatistics, epidemiology, machine learning, or related).
- Hands-on ML and data analysis for translational medicine; Fluent Python; experience analyzing human genetic, multi-omic, cohort, trial or real-world data in reproducible pipelines; ability to run analyses and interpret results.
- Mechanistic reasoning about therapeutic interventions and understanding of what evidence would establish each step and how human evidence supports or undercuts it.
- Clinical development fluency: familiarity with trial design, endpoints, biomarker strategy, eligibility and enrichment.
- Evidence judgment and systems instinct; ability to reason about what was knowable when and document it in a reproducible, structured way.
Skills
Required:PythonTranslational data analysisMechanistic reasoningClinical development fluency
Benefits
- Full benefits program (medical, dental, vision) in U.S.; life and disability insurance; flexible time off and holidays; paid parental leave; educational assistance; commuter benefits; company lunch program.
- International benefits tailored to region; USD salary ranges apply to U.S.-based positions; international salaries set to local market.
Last updated Sep 16, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Lila Sciences
Pioneering Scientific Superintelligence
Pioneering Scientific Superintelligence to solve humankind’s greatest challenges.
Scientific SuperintelligenceAIAutonomous LabsLife SciencesChemical SciencesMaterials Sciences
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