Helical is building the in-silico labs for biology
Drug discovery still relies on wet labs: slow, expensive, and constrained by physical trial-and-error. Helical is changing that.
We build the application layer that makes Bio Foundation Models usable in real-world drug discovery, enabling pharma and biotech teams to run millions of virtual experiments in days, not years. Today, leading global pharma companies already use Helical, and we’re at the start of a highly ambitious growth journey.
We’re a founder-led, talent-dense team building a category-defining company from Europe. We care deeply about the quality of our work, move fast, and expect ownership. If you’re excited by complexity, real responsibility, and shaping how a company actually operates as it scales, you’ll feel at home here.
About the Role
We are looking for a
Software Developer with a strong background in computational biology or bioinformatics
to join our core product development team.
This unique role bridges cutting-edge
biological data science
and software engineering, helping bring novel bio foundation models into production and optimize workflows for biological data processing and model execution.
The ideal candidate is passionate about biology, enjoys coding and problem solving at scale, and is eager to collaborate across teams of ML scientists, backend engineers, and biologists.
Responsibilities
Design, implement, and maintain scalable pipelines for biological data processing and analysis
Integrate and optimize Bio Foundation Models for production use, collaborating with ML researchers
Develop tools and services for data visualization, annotation, and quality control of biological datasets
Collaborate closely with AI infrastructure and software engineers to improve workflow reliability and scalability
Contribute to the architecture and implementation of backend services and APIs supporting biological workflows
Requirements
MSc or PhD in Biology, Computational Biology, Bioinformatics
, or a closely related life sciences field — you studied the science
2+ years
of professional software development experience — you've shipped production code, not just notebooks
Python
— strong, production-grade foundations; comfortable with package structure, clean code patterns, and debugging across complex codebases
Single-cell analysis
— hands-on experience with the modern single-cell stack: AnnData, scanpy, scib, scipy, and related tools
Biological reasoning
— you can look at a set of model predictions and assess whether they make biological sense; you understand experimental design, perturbation biology, and what "evidence" means in a discovery context
Data fluency
— comfortable working with large biological datasets, understanding file formats (h5ad, csv, parquet), and writing efficient data processing code
Familiarity with
Git workflows
and collaborative development practices
Nice to Haves
Exposure to
bio foundation models
— you've worked with or fine-tuned models like scGPT, Geneformer, scVI, or similar
Experience with
pytest
and test-driven development practices
Familiarity with
cloud development
(AWS, GCP, or Azure) — running workloads beyond your local machine
Experience with
CI/CD pipelines
and automated deployment workflows
Working knowledge of
Docker
and containerised development environments
Experience in pharma or biotech — you understand the compliance and validation expectations that come with the territory
Proven product already in use with top pharma
Opportunity to shape a category-defining company at an inflection point
High ownership, direct impact, and close collaboration with founders
Competitive Salary, Equity and Benefits