Functional Genomics Scientist

Open roles across robotics, biology, and infrastructure. London-based;some roles remote-friendly.

London

Full time

On-site

Research

Substrate is building a network of fully autonomous wet labs, cloud-based data production facilities for AI biology, integrated with foundation models to become the critical infrastructure layer for AI-driven biological discovery. Our first node opens in King’s Cross, London, with several integrated workcells and two scientific verticals online by mid-2027. Our customers range from foundation model labs to global pharma.

We are hiring across three tiers — Lab Technician, Scientist, and Principal Scientist in functional genomics. This is the second scientific vertical we are bringing online, alongside protein science. The vertical covers cell line engineering, perturbation library design, screen execution, and bulk and single-cell sequencing readouts, with the resulting data feeding customer pipelines that include foundation model training for virtual cell models.

Manual development of the day-1 screening workflow is starting now, and full autonomous execution on workcells is targeted for mid‑to‑late 2027. You will be the bench scientists who develop, validate, and operate the screens through that transition: running them by hand, setting reproducibility and quality thresholds, working alongside automation engineers as the screens move onto instrumentation, and validating equivalence at every step.

The Head of Functional Genomics you will work under is being hired alongside you.

Substrate is spinning out of Automata, the UK lab automation company that has built the workcell platform our labs run on. Our four co‑founders are Mostafa ElSayed (CEO and founder of Automata), Oli Hoy (formerly VP Customer Experience at Automata), Alexey Morgunov (AI Scientist co‑founder, leading the intelligence software product), and a Founding Biology Lead joining shortly. We are aiming to have ramped up to 32 people by the end of Q1 2027.

We are funded in parallel by a combination of venture funding and government grants. We are not a cloud lab and we are not a CRO. We are an autonomous lab platform with closed‑loop integration available as one operating mode for foundation model partners.

You will be at the bench. The work is to develop, validate, and operate the screens that will eventually run autonomously on Substrate’s workcells. In the first phase, that means manual screen development: cell line preparation, library cloning and QC, lentivirus production, screen execution, sequencing sample prep, and the readout pipeline — all by hand, setting reproducibility and quality thresholds, and proving each step out before it moves onto instrumentation.

As the workcells arrive, 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.

We are hiring across three levels:

Principal Scientists own a slice of the screening workflow end to end: scoping it with the Head, designing the manual protocol, validating it to acceptance thresholds, authoring the SOPs that translate to workcell 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 decisions.

All three tiers work directly with our automation engineering and software teams on the boundary between scientific protocols and autonomous execution.

What is unusual about the work is that no screen in this vertical is being retrofitted onto automation. Every protocol is designed for AI‑in‑the‑loop execution from the first manual run. The data each screen produces — cell line…