Senior Scientist Structural Data Representation
Astera Institute is an active nonprofit research institute and foundation that operates in-house neuroscience-informed AI research and funds, operates, and supports open-science programs and public goods.
About Astera Institute
Astera operates three divisions: Neuro-AI, Radial life-sciences research, and its Foundation. Its AI work pursues neuroscience-informed approaches to artificial general intelligence, while its foundation and Radial activities support open scientific infrastructure, datasets, research programs, and residencies.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will lead the development of representations, schemas, databases, and integrations for conformational ensemble models. You will manage scientists and software engineers, set strategy, coordinate with modeling and functional teams, work with external partners, and help implement ensemble support in open-source structural biology tools.
Requirements
- PhD in a relevant area
- At least 4 years of work experience
- Experience managing scientists or engineers
- Understanding of structural model encoding and interpretation
- Fluency in mmCIF and its extension mechanisms
- Strong coding experience and a record of writing software used by others
- Communication skills across structural biology, machine learning, and software development
- Product development experience
- Experience building scientific databases or visualization tools
Responsibilities
- Lead and mentor scientists and software engineers
- Set priorities and drive adoption of ensemble models
- Determine strategy and prioritize approaches and science
- Coordinate data representation choices with modeling and functional analysis teams
- Design, test, and deploy encoding models and schemas for conformational ensembles
- Direct development of databases and visualization tools for data sharing and downstream use
- Work with external partners and developers to connect Prism's work with external tools
- Define and implement native ensemble-model support in open-source structural biology tools
Benefits
- Health insurance with 99% of premiums covered for employees and dependents
- Daily lunch
- Stocked fridge and pantry
- Licenses for frontier AI tools and software
- 403(b) retirement plan
- Flexible paid time off
- Paid parental leave
- Commuter benefits
- Health and dependent care FSAs
- Visa sponsorship
- Relocation packages may be considered