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# Head of Functional Genomics

- **Company:** Substrate Bio
- **Location:** London, UK
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Automata Theory, Data Infrastructure, Experimental Data, Laboratory Information Management Systems, Data Streaming
- **Published:** May 22, 2026
- **Apply:** https://uk.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=a4db54fba75a5f8c

## About the Role

Do you have experience in Node.js?, * Seven or more years of experience in functional genomics or related disciplines (target validation, perturbation screening), with at least three in a senior or team-leading role at a biotech, pharma R&D, or CRO.

 * End-to-end hands-on experience in at least one screening modality (typically CRISPR knockout or CRISPRi knockdown), covering cell line preparation, library design, screen execution, and sequencing readout, with working familiarity across single-cell readouts and validation workflows.
 * Track record of leading a small scientific team end to end: hiring, setting quality standards, and managing performance against scientific outputs.
 * Customer-facing experience, either as a CRO scientific lead working with external customers, or as a pharma or biotech scientist embedded with internal customer teams., * Hands-on experience in cell line engineering, particularly iPSC differentiation or CRISPR-edited stable cell line generation.
 * Direct experience moving screens from manual workflows onto lab automation platforms.
 * Familiarity with structured experimental data capture, LIMS, ELN, or analogous data infrastructure.
 * Experience working with computational or AI/ML colleagues on closed-loop perturbation programmes.
 * Background at an AI-native biotech or foundation model company.

## Description

You will own functional genomics end-to-end. Day one priorities are the scientific pieces of standing up a vertical from scratch: scoping the priority screening menu against early customer demand, developing and validating those screens manually, setting quality thresholds, and hiring the Principal Scientists, Scientists, and Lab Technicians who will operate the function at scale. The vertical will eventually span cell line engineering across catalogue lines and iPSC-derived models, perturbation library design and production, pooled screen execution, and bulk and single-cell sequencing readouts; the day-1 wedge is one end-to-end workflow through these stages, scoped narrowly to a focused starting subset within each, and you decide what that scope looks like.

Two parts of the role are not standard, and they are why this role is so crucial to Substrate's success. The first is that the functional genomics vertical is being built AI-first from day one. Every screen is designed from scratch for full AI-in-the-loop automation, not retrofitted onto a manual workflow. You do the work by hand first, exactly as you would in a high-end pharma research lab, and then work with Automata's automation scientists to shape the workcells the screens will eventually run on. You will define the quality thresholds for each transition stage, decide which manual judgement calls have to be re-engineered out, and own the validation that proves equivalence at each step.

The second is closed-loop work with foundation model partners. Substrate's distinctive operating mode is producing structured, machine-readable experimental data fast enough to feed directly into foundation model training. That changes how functional genomics screens get designed: cell line provenance, library composition, perturbation metadata, sequencing QC, and consistency across runs become first-class scientific constraints. You will work directly with model partners on screen co-design, and with our software and intelligence teams on how the resulting data flows back into customer pipelines and into Substrate's own data factory.

You will also be the executive partner to the co-founders on anything functional-genomics related: the screening roadmap, the proprietary functional genomics dataset programme on the reserved fraction of lab capacity, and the customer conversations where functional genomics depth is decisive., * Land in the lab. Set up workspace at our King's Cross site and start manual screen development.

 * Scope the day-1 wedge against early customer demand: which cell line, which perturbation library, which sequencing readout, validated as one end-to-end workflow before the menu starts to expand.
 * Hire the first Principal Scientist and Lab Technician alongside you. Define the roles, run the processes, close the offers., * Develop and validate the first screens manually. Set the reproducibility and quality thresholds that will serve as acceptance criteria for the moves to instrumented and to fully autonomous execution.
 * Co-design protocols with the software and automation engineering teams so that the manual versions you validate are automation-ready by design. Decide which manual judgement calls have to be engineered out before they hit a workcell.
 * Begin co-design conversations with the first commercial customers, including the foundation model partners coming online from mid-2027., * Workcells arrive in the lab. Move the validated screens onto them, running with instrumentation and human intervention in the loop ahead of full autonomous operation later in 2027. Validate equivalence against the manual baselines.
 * Grow the team. Bring on the second Principal Scientist and the first scientists at the bench to support throughput as the screening menu opens to customers.
 * Ship the first revenue on the functional genomics vertical from manual and semi-automated services., You are an experienced functional genomics scientist who has built or led a screening function at a biotech, pharma R&D, or CRO. You are comfortable in the detail at the bench and you are comfortable setting direction for a team. The shape of the problem is what attracts you: a screening portfolio that has to be designed for autonomous execution from day one, in a business where the data the lab produces is itself part of the product.

You have hired and managed scientists, principal scientists, and technicians. You have set quality thresholds and held people to them. You have run screens that supported real customers, internal teams in pharma or biotech or external customers in a CRO setting, and you understand what enterprise-grade scientific operations look like.

You are pragmatic about being hands-on at the bench in the first six to nine months, and excited about the team you will build behind you. You enjoy interviewing, hiring, mentoring, and setting standards. You will be in the lab at our King's Cross site at the cadence the science demands. That cadence will be heavy in the manual development phase and ease as the function grows and protocols move onto instrumentation. You are comfortable with that., You will initially report to Alexey Morgunov, our science and AI focused co-founder. We are recruiting a Founding Biology Lead, the co-founder who will own scientific operations across the verticals; once they join, your reporting line will likely move to them. You will work most closely with the Head of Protein Science, who is being hired alongside you, and with the software and automation engineering teams on the boundary between scientific protocols and autonomous execution.


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