Molecular Characterisation Scientist, Biologics

The opportunity

Substrate is building the molecular characterisation cascade that turns purified protein into trustworthy, quality-controlled, biophysically characterised data at scale, and you will build it from the first manual run. This is the work downstream of protein production and upstream of functional assays: quality control, binding, stability, and develop ability, developed by hand and engineered to move onto automation.

The data this cascade produces is the product. Substrate is the critical infrastructure layer between AI and biology, and biological foundation models can predict but cannot experiment; the high-quality, large-scale data they need does not exist yet. Your work at the bench is what brings it into existence.

Substrate is building the critical infrastructure layer between AI and biology: an AI-native automated lab that produces biological data  for biology has a data problem, not a compute problem. Biological foundation models can predict but cannot experiment, and the high-quality, large-scale data they need does not exist. Substrate generates it, with quality and provenance built in. We are not a CRO and we are not a cloud lab.

The company was founded by four co-founders and is funded through a combination of equity and debt. The first lab is in London, with a larger automation node to follow. The work starts with two scientific verticals, protein characterisation and functional genomics, and this role sits at the heart of the protein characterisation work.

You will build the molecular characterisation cascade that sits downstream of protein production and upstream of functional assays: the biophysical, analytical, and develop ability assays that decide what each molecule is and whether it holds up. The cascade will eventually run autonomously on Substrate’s automation platform. In the first phase, you develop each assay by hand, running protocols manually, setting reproducibility and quality thresholds, and proving each assay out before it moves onto instrumentation.

As the automation platform comes online, the work shifts toward instrumented execution, equivalence validation, and the engineering judgement calls that decide which manual steps get automated and which stay in human hands. Every level works directly with the automation engineering and software teams on the boundary between scientific protocols and autonomous execution.

• Principal Scientists own a slice of the assay menu end to end: scoping, designing the manual protocol, validating it to acceptance thresholds, authoring the SOPs that translate into automation design, and seeing it through to automated execution.

• Scientists work alongside Principal Scientists at the bench, executing the experiments, contributing to validation work, and growing into protocol authorship over the first year.

• Lab Technicians are the hands‑on execution layer: following established SOPs, preparing reagents and consumables, maintaining equipment, and running routine steps of validated protocols so that Scientists and Principal Scientists can focus on design and troubleshooting.

• Land in the lab. Set up your bench at the London site and start manual assay development alongside a senior member of the protein sciences vertical.

• Get hands on the first priority characterisation assays as the day‑one menu locks. Start building QC (purity, concentration, oligomeric state), binding (SPR or BLI), and stability (nanoDSF, DLS) readouts. Run them by hand on equipment that will eventually move onto the automation platform, capturing the data‑structure and metadata decisions that translate into automation design.

• Build reproducibility, precision, and acceptance thresholds into the workflow.

• Contribute to the day‑one menu decisions and begin authoring SOPs for your slice of the assay portfolio. Help interview the scientists and lab technicians joining alongside you.

• Develop and validate a QC (purity, concentration, oligomeric state), binding (SPR or BLI), and stability (nanoDSF, DLS) workflow, first…