AI Biologist - Peptide Discovery

The role

You will act as a scientific authority to test if AI agents can reason like expert peptide discovery scientists. You will build tasks and datasets, curate real program data, and build analysis pipelines in Python to set the standard for agent outputs.

What you will do

• Define expert reasoning for peptide discovery and write gold-standard answers
• Design realistic scenarios across the discovery arc
• Curate datasets from real programs
• Build analysis pipelines in Python
• Partner with software engineers to turn judgment into new workflows
• Test whether agents distinguish true signal from artifact
• Adjudicate conflicting evidence
• Test whether agents weigh the right tradeoffs
• Interrogate agent reasoning step by step
• Score agent confidence

Required qualifications

• PhD in peptide chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, structural biology, medicinal chemistry, or a related field
• Senior, hands-on peptide discovery experience
• Direct experience with at least one of: display selection (phage, mRNA, ribosome, RaPID, or DNA-encoded libraries), SPR/BLI or FP binding kinetics, binding-site mapping by structural MS or NMR, or pep
• Deep expertise in at least one area (display and selection, biophysics, structural mapping, or peptide medicinal chemistry) and working fluency across the others
• Strong command of experimental design, quantitative data analysis in Python or R, and statistics
• Daily use of Claude, Cursor, or similar agents
• Confidence to overrule an AI agent when the evidence demands it
• Ability to calibrate confidence and communicate uncertainty

Nice to have

• peptide format and chemistry experience, such as macrocyclization, hydrocarbon stapling, N-methylation, D- and non-canonical residues, or HELM encoding
• target tractability or de novo design experience, such as PPI hotspot analysis, human-genetic evidence for therapeutic direction, or computational design with Rosetta or RFdiffusion

Benefits

• Health, dental, vision: 100% covered for you, 50% for dependents
• 401(k) (no match)
• PTO: 12 days to start, more as you’re promoted
• Catered lunch and dinner (onsite)
• Unlimited snacks (onsite)
• Company outings most months
• Team off-sites

Before you apply

• If your profile matches, we’ll send you a take-home project
• We sponsor H-1B (new and transfers), O-1, and TN, and support STEM OPT
• Background check, once you accept

About the company

Latch builds rigorous scientific benchmarks for AI agents across biology. They work with frontier labs and pharma to measure whether agents can handle real biological workflows.