Lead Scientist – AI for Life Sciences

San Francisco / hybrid or remote arrangements subject to agreement | Full-time

Aspire Life Sciences is recruiting Lead Scientists for a scientific AI company expanding its benchmarking teams. You’ll lead approximately seven scientists, shape how AI agents are evaluated on biological research, and take responsibility for the quality and delivery of your team’s work.

The company develops scientific benchmarks used by frontier AI labs to assess biological capabilities and safeguards. Its teams combine scientific expertise with software engineering to test whether agents can interpret experimental evidence, recognise uncertainty and reach scientifically defensible conclusions.

The role

Reporting to a Member of Technical Staff, you’ll help build and scale benchmark production, working closely with scientists, product engineers and scientific leadership.



Your responsibilities will include:

• Leading approximately seven scientists through clear priorities, coaching, feedback and resolution of scientific or delivery issues.
• Co-designing benchmarks that test meaningful scientific capabilities and reveal limitations in model performance.
• Defining evaluation tasks, grading methods, scoring rubrics and reference-answer standards.
• Reviewing work for scientific rigour, clarity, relevance and reproducibility, including appropriate treatment of uncertainty and alternative interpretations.
• Owning team delivery against partner requirements, volumes and deadlines.
• Working with engineers to automate workflows, improve analysis tools and increase scientist productivity.
• Shaping scientific roadmaps, data acquisition and hiring as the team grows.

You’ll remain close to the science: challenging analyses, refining evaluations and helping the team resolve difficult questions.

Your experience

You bring scientific depth alongside experience leading people and delivering research or development programmes. Relevant backgrounds may include computational biology, bioinformatics, pharmacology, biologics, biophysics or another life-sciences discipline.

We’re interested in leaders who can:

• Review scientific data and reasoning critically, identify weak assumptions and explain what evidence would change a conclusion.
• Set consistent quality standards across the work of several scientists.
• Balance scientific depth with delivery commitments and competing priorities.
• Work effectively with software engineers on reproducible analysis and workflow improvements.
• Demonstrate computational fluency and explain their personal contribution to scientific analysis.

Experience designing AI evaluations, benchmarks or scientific grading systems is particularly relevant. We also welcome scientific leaders with strong transferable experience in experimental design, analytical validation and reviewing complex research.

How to apply

Apply with your CV and a brief outline of your scientific specialism and leadership responsibilities. The interview process typically takes around two weeks and includes a practical evaluation project, technical discussion, career review and leadership interview.

For a confidential discussion, contact James Trott, Co-Founder of Aspire Life Sciences. James works with founders and scientific leaders building teams at the intersection of life sciences and technology.