Senior Research Scientist, AI Safety and Biosecurity

ABOUT US Basecamp Research is building frontier AI for therapeutic design. We believe the future of medicine lies in reprogramming the body to repair itself, and we design the models and the medicines to teach it how. Our EDEN models are trained on BaseData, the world's largest proprietary genomic dataset, with over 10B genes collected through partnerships in more than 30 countries across all seven continents. This gives our AI models access to genetic diversity that doesn't exist in public databases, and enables EDEN to design cell and gene therapies, enzymes, and peptides directly from information about a disease. Our pipeline of EDEN-designed therapeutics, beginning with in vivo cell therapy, is advancing towards clinical development. In September 2026 we closed an oversubscribed $140M Series C led by S32, with participation from NVIDIA, Anthropic's Anthology Fund, Catalio, European Tech Collective, Firebrand River Capital, King Philanthropies, NATO Innovation Fund, NVentures (NVIDIA's venture arm), Redalpine, Rockefeller Foundation, Singular, Sovereign AI and True Ventures. We have offices and labs in London and Boston, we partner with biopharma companies and academic institutions worldwide, and our work has been recognised by Fast Company's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Biotech, the FT-backed Sifted AI100 list of Europe's leading AI startups as well as Barclays Eagle Labs Ones to watch, AI100. At Basecamp Research, we pride ourselves on being a lean collaborative and global team with extremely specialist and unique skills. Our biologists, engineers, ML scientists and field explorers are united by a sense of adventure and the belief that AI, biology and data, will result in new medicines for patients who have few options today. THE ROLE You will advance our work on AI safety and biosecurity, studying the capabilities and risks of biological AI systems and developing methods to evaluate them and make them safer. We train frontier biological models on BaseData, which captures genetic diversity beyond what is available in public databases. You will work within the team that develops these models, with access to the data, training process, and biological expertise needed to study their capabilities and test safeguards. You will build on our existing safety work and help set research priorities as our models develop. Depending on your expertise, your work could include: - Designing evaluations and red-teaming studies that measure what biological AI systems enable in practice, including how much they add to existing tools and expertise. - Developing threat models grounded in biology, and working with experimental scientists to establish when computational results support conclusions about real-world capabilities or risk. - Investigating model behaviour, representations, and generalisation to understand where safety evaluations and safeguards hold up or fail. - Developing and testing safeguards across training, model behaviour, design screening, and access, measuring both their effectiveness and their effect on useful scientific work. We will shape the research focus together around your strengths and the problems that matter most. You will lead projects from the initial question through to experiments and methods that the team can use. Your findings will inform how we develop our models and what we publish, release, and offer through our services. You will also have scope to publish research where appropriate and collaborate with the wider AI safety and biosecurity community. You will report to the Head of AI Research and work alongside researchers in genomics, sequence modelling, and large-scale deep learning, as well as computational biologists and experimental teams across the company. ABOUT YOU You have a strong record of original research in machine learning, AI safety, computational biology, biosecurity, or a closely related field. We want to see work that has advanced understanding or changed research practice: influential papers, research tools used by others, evaluations adopted by other teams, or methods that changed how a system was built or deployed. You bring deep expertise in a relevant area, such as model evaluation, interpretability, robustness, safeguards, biological modelling, or quantitative assessment of biological risk. You understand modern machine learning and can write the code, run the experiments, and analyse the results needed to test your ideas. You have a PhD in a relevant field or an equivalent research record, and have led substantial research projects. You can explain your own contribution, the choices you made, and what you learned when an approach did not work. You are curious about biology and willing to learn its details, whether you already work on biological AI or bring methods from another domain. You work closely with domain experts and recognise when a model score is insufficient evidence for a biological claim. You exercise good judgement under uncertainty. You design experiments with appropriate controls, look for alternative explanations, and communicate findings and limitations clearly enough for others to act on them. You work well in a small research team: sharing credit, taking criticism seriously, and helping colleagues solve problems outside your immediate project. You care about enabling useful scientific and medical applications of AI and are motivated to make them safer. NICE TO HAVE - Research experience in AI safety or biosecurity, including evaluations, red-teaming, or threat modelling. - Experience with protein design, genomic models, structure prediction, or other biological AI systems. - Experimental biology experience, or computational research validated in collaboration with an experimental team. - Experience implementing and evaluating safeguards in deployed systems. - Collaboration with biosecurity organisations, synthesis screening initiatives, or AI safety institutes. COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS WHAT WE OFFER IN RETURN - Impactful Mission: This is a rare chance to do work that genuinely matters. You'll join a talented, fast-moving team, access unique biological datasets at scale, and see your contributions shape real breakthroughs in AI and curative therapeutics.. - Collaborative Culture: You'll be surrounded by world-class engineers, scientists, and researchers who care deeply about their work and about each other. With offices in London and Boston, we've built a flexible, cross-functional environment where personal development and real ownership aren't just talking points. - High Growth: We truly believe in investing our people we make coaching available to team members during steep growth journeys and we have twice yearly promotion opportunities. People who are really successful here own it and go directly to solve problems at pace and we ensure reward increases with impact. - Comprehensive Benefits: We've built a benefits package people value. That means competitive salary, equity, and private healthcare with no medical history exclusions so strong that means most employees' family members opt into our plan over their own. We also offer Carrot Fertility with IVF stipend, salary sacrifice pension, bike to work scheme, life insurance, and more. We are committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of ethnic or national origin, race, religion, sex, age, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, gender identity or any other basis. If you have a disability or additional need that needs accommodating do let us know. We are committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of ethnic or national origin, race, religion, sex, age, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, gender identity or any other basis. If you have a disability or additional need that needs accommodating do let us know.