ML Research Scientist, Co-Folding and Affinity

Staff ML Research Scientist, Co-Folding and Affinity Location

United Kingdom

Full time

AI Simulation

At Sandbox

AQ, we are committed to competitive, equitable, and transparent compensation; we continuously benchmark our salaries and total compensation to premium markets to ensure our competitiveness. Individual pay within the above range is determined by job-related skills, experience, education, and geographic location.

With a focus on pay equity and ensuring opportunity for future salary progression, our typical practice is to hire within the first half of the base salary range for a given role and level. This approach allows us to reward performance and increasing expertise consistently as your career develops with us.

We use geographic pay tiers to reflect the pay differences in local markets:

• For the US:
  • Tier 1: Applies to candidates within 50 miles of New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Wash D.C., Boston
  • Tier 2: Applies to candidates within 50 miles of Portland, Boulder, Austin, Denver, Chicago, San Diego, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, LA
  • Tier 3: Everywhere else in the US
• For the UK:
  • Tier 1: Applies to candidates within 50 miles of London, Cambridge, Oxford
  • Tier 2: Everywhere else in the UK
• For Canada:
  • Tier 1: Applies to candidates within 50 miles of Toronto & Vancouver
  • Tier 2: Everywhere else in Canada

Sandbox

AQ is a high‑growth company delivering AI solutions that address some of the world’s greatest challenges. The company’s Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) power advances in life sciences, financial services, navigation, cybersecurity, and other sectors.

We are a global team that is tech-focused and includes experts in AI, chemistry, cybersecurity, physics, mathematics, medicine, engineering, and other specialties. The company emerged from Alphabet Inc. as an independent, growth‑backed company in 2022, funded by leading investors and supported by a braintrust of industry leaders.

At Sandbox

AQ, we’ve cultivated an environment that encourages creativity, collaboration, and impact. By investing deeply in our people, we’re building a thriving global workforce poised to tackle the world’s epic challenges. Join us to advance your career in pursuit of an inspiring mission, in a community of like‑minded people who value entrepreneurialism, ownership, and transformative impact.

The AI Sim R&D team creates leading edge ML and physics‑based models ("LQMs") to advance drug and materials discovery. We are a flexible, creative, and impact driven team of multidisciplinary scientists and engineers, whose products dramatically accelerate the creation of molecules and medicines.

As a Staff ML Research Scientist focusing on Co‑Folding & Affinity, you will occupy a senior position architecting our ML biopharma capabilities. Your central purpose is to redefine the state‑of‑the‑art in structure prediction and binding affinity, transforming these breakthroughs into core components of our software suite. Within your first year, you will: pioneer novel deep learning architectures that surpass current benchmarks, orchestrate the seamless integration of these models into production‑ready drug discovery pipelines, and solidify Sandbox

AQ’s scientific authority through high‑impact publications and industry‑shaping research.

• Pioneer Novel Architectures: Drive the research and development of next‑generation deep learning models for protein‑ligand co‑folding and affinity prediction.
• Architect Product Integration: Bridge from research to commercial utility by equipping Sandbox
  
  AQ’s software products with advanced predictive capabilities.
• Orchestrate Technical Strategy: Bring novel ideas and the content of scientific papers into the ideation, training, and benchmarking of complex models, ensuring they are optimized for large‑scale, real‑world drug discovery applications.
• Champion Scientific Excellence: Act as a technical beacon for the team, representing Sandbox
  
  AQ scientifically and shaping its vision externally and internally.
• Scale High‑Performing Teams: Mentor junior researchers and collaborate across engineering and product teams to…