Founding Scientist Co-Founder

### About the Role This is a rare opportunity to join as a **Founding Scientist / Co-Founder** at an early-stage startup at the intersection of AI and wet-lab biology, operating within the **aerospace and defense** sector. You will combine hands-on biological expertise with computational thinking to shape the company's scientific strategy and core technology — bridging laboratory work with AI-driven workflows to accelerate discovery. This role is on-site in **Germany**. Candidates must be eligible to work in Germany without visa sponsorship. ### What You'll Do * Define and lead the scientific vision and research roadmap for early-stage AI + wet-lab products. * Design and execute key experiments in molecular biology, biochemistry, or genomics to validate models and assays. * Collaborate closely with engineers and ML researchers to translate experimental needs into computational requirements. * Implement and oversee lab automation and data pipelines to scale experiments and improve reproducibility. * Prototype computational tools and analyses; contribute code or notebooks integrating wet-lab data with models. * Mentor and recruit early scientific hires; establish laboratory best practices and safety standards. * Help navigate sector-specific constraints unique to aerospace and defense applications. ### What We're Looking For ### Required: * PhD in Biotechnology, Genomics, Biology, or a closely related field. * Senior-level research experience in molecular biology, biochemistry, genomics, biotech, or equivalent industry background. * Demonstrated experience applying AI/ML to biological data (computational biology, bioinformatics, or similar). * Experience in or familiarity with aerospace or defense domains, including an understanding of sector-specific constraints. * Comfortable with computational thinking and coding; experience with ML is a strong plus. * Must be eligible to work in Germany without visa sponsorship. ### Nice to Have: * Prior experience at AI-for-biology companies, biotech startups, or similar industry environments. * ### Hands-on lab automation experience. * Prior founder experience or direct experience scaling early-stage teams and operations. * Entrepreneurial mindset with comfort navigating ambiguity in a fast-moving startup environment. * Strong cross-functional communication and collaboration skills. **Ideal Background:** Research or training at a leading institution or university, with a track record that combines rigorous wet-lab science and computational fluency. Candidates with backgrounds at defense-adjacent biotech firms or aerospace technology companies are particularly well-suited. ### What You'll Be Building You will work at the frontier of **AI-accelerated biology**, helping to build systems that tightly integrate machine learning models with experimental wet-lab workflows. The team values intellectual curiosity, a bias toward action, and the ability to move fluidly between the bench and the codebase. ### Location & Work Arrangement * **Location:** Germany (on-site) * **Remote:** Not available for this role * **Visa Sponsorship:** Not available — candidates must have existing eligibility to work in Germany Originally posted on [Himalayas](https://himalayas.app)