Biophysicist

Job Description

This position is on-site in Budapest and requires EU residency and EU work visa.

We are building a computational imaging platform that recovers the physical optical properties of a scene — the illumination, the camera’s own response, and how real materials reflect and scatter light — from images captured with ordinary consumer cameras. We are building the whole stack: capture, models, and the applications that run on them.

This role owns the biology behind what we capture: what a layered, scattering biological material is made of, which of its constituents interact with light and how, and what that means for what our measurements can and cannot tell us. You will work closely with our imaging and AI scientists and engineers, who own the capture and calibration, the models, and the training data. They understand light and computation; you bring the biology and the laboratory discipline, and you will learn the tissue-optics side of the problem from them and from the literature as you go. While this is not a software engineering role, you will play a key part in turning scientific insights into concrete, testable requirements that help engineers bring innovative ideas to life.

In your first year you will build and document our biological reference base: the tissues we study, the components that interact with light, and the reference measurements used to validate our models.

• Act as the team’s reference on the biochemistry, structure, and physiology of layered biological tissue and its optically active constituents and keep that knowledge current with the literature across biophysics, biomedical optics, and analysis and modeling of biological materials.
• Build and maintain the internal reference base of chromophore absorption characteristics, tissue layer composition, and the physiological ranges and variation across the human population relevant to our measurements.
• Design, calibrate, and run quantitative analytical and spectrophotometric methods for characterizing biological samples and reference materials, and document them to a standard that others can reproduce.
• Evaluate, specify, and validate the reference materials and tissue phantoms used to check the platform’s measurements against independent physical ground truth.
• Work with the leads to design human-subject capture studies: protocol design, subject diversity across the full range of human variation relevant to the measurements, informed consent, ethics approval, and data governance.
• Help the engineers build a computational model of layered biological tissue: supply the structure, composition, and physiological parameter ranges the model needs, and check its behavior against biological reality.
• Translate biological knowledge into measurable, testable requirements and priors for the imaging and ML teams, and flag where a proposed measurement is biologically implausible or where a result is not supported by the underlying biology.
• Analyze experimental and measurement data, including uncertainty, and report what the data supports as distinct from what it merely suggests.
• Contribute to internal technical briefs, patent filings, and the scientific record behind the platform.

The Education & Experience list is the shortlisting bar: we do not progress candidates who cannot evidence every item on it. The Strongly Preferred list separates shortlisted candidates from one another — nobody is expected to have all of it, and its absence alone will not cost you the role.

• Master’s degree or PhD required, in biophysics, computational biology, biochemical engineering, biotechnology, biomedical science, or a closely related field. A dermatological focus is an advantage.
• Strong background in studying the structure, dynamics, and function of biological systems using experimental and computational approaches.
• Hands-on research experience in the biophysical characterization of biological samples, including quantitative absorption spectroscopy (spectrophotometry) and related optical measurement techniques.
• Experience developing and calibrating a quantitative analytical method from first principles.
• Working knowledge of the biochemistry and physiology of human tissue, including the constituents that absorb and scatter light, or a demonstrated ability to acquire it rapidly from the primary literature.
• Designing experiments and interpreting data with appropriate consideration of uncertainty.
• Practical Python and Linux skills for scientific computing and data analysis.

• Laboratory rigor - attention to method, documentation, and independent validation of results.
• Ability to explain biological concepts clearly to physicists, engineers, and ML researchers and ensure conclusions remain grounded in biology
• Comfort learning an adjacent discipline — biomedical optics and spectral imaging — quickly and on the job, alongside specialists in it.
• The judgment to distinguish what the data supports from what it merely suggests.
• Comfort operating in a confidential, research-driven, fast-moving environment where requirements evolve quickly.
• High ownership, sharp attention to detail, and genuine curiosity about the problem.
• Comfortable communicating and working in English. Candidates must be eligible to work in Hungary, or hold qualifications that allow the Company to sponsor a Hungarian work permit (e.g. Hungarian Card or EU Blue Card) for them.

• Coursework or research exposure to the interaction of radiation or light with biological systems.
• Familiarity with tissue optics, biomedical optics, or spectral imaging of biological materials, at any depth.
• Experience in dermatology or dermatological research — clinical, laboratory, or cosmetic-science — including familiarity with skin typing, pigmentation, and vascular variation across the population.
• Experience with oxidative, pigment, or hemoprotein biochemistry, or with the biochemistry of ocular or dermal tissue.
• Experience with bioprocess or biochemical modeling and optimization.
• Experience fabricating or validating reference materials or tissue phantoms.
• Research presentations or publications in applied biotechnology, biophysics, or a related field.
• Experience designing studies involving human subjects or human-derived samples, including ethics approval and GDPR handling of health-adjacent data.
• Additional languages beyond English.

• Salary range: HUF 1,000,000 – HUF 1,500,000 gross per month, depending on experience and demonstrated depth.
• Discretionary performance bonus, with details discussed with shortlisted candidates.

Compensation decisions are made on the basis of objective, gender-neutral criteria, including relevant experience, technical skills, scope of responsibility, and demonstrated performance. The Company does not request salary history during the recruitment process.