Role
As a VP of Research - Foundation Models (Distinguished Scientist / Research Lead), you will own:
1. Pre-training strategy and execution for biologics foundation models built from scratch across modalities (architecture, data, representation, scaling, evaluation).
2. Continued pre-training and adaptation of vertical LLMs for regulated industries.
3. The full training stack in practice: data pipelines, distributed training, scaling laws, evaluation harnesses, checkpointing, failure recovery.
4. Research direction, standards and review for a small founding team.
5. Translating frontier research into models that hold up in regulated, real-world use.
You’ll be a hands-on Research Lead / Distinguished Scientist role - not a manager of managers - owning architectures, training runs, and technical direction alongside a founding team of elite researchers. Freedom to publish, established compute resources, and direct collaboration with founders, offering real ownership and zero bureaucracy from day one.
Requirements
To succeed in this role, you bring a combination of expertise, experience, and skills including:
6. World-class pre-training experience (Meta / FAIR, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Mistral, or equivalent/academic).
7. Deep mastery of large-scale distributed training (parallelism strategies, scaling laws, optimization at scale, debugging instability).
8. Demonstrated experience in data acquisition and preparation at scale.
9. Strong publication or shipped-model track record.
10. Biologics / scientific foundation model pre-training experience across modalities ( protein, genomic, molecular, structural, multi-omics, or other specialized scientific domains).
11. PhD in a relevant field.
12. Ability to code and stay hands-on in the details.
13. Willingness to be based in Switzerland (Lausanne or Zurich), on-site.
Benefits
By joining us as VP of Research, you'll benefit from
14. Defined, in-place compute to run real pre-training.
15. A founding research seat with genuine technical authority.
16. Direct partnership with top-20 pharma companies to bring world-leading models to life.
17. Direct line to the founding team and co-shaping the company strategy
18. Ability to publish and open source research
19. A competitive compensation package incl. Equity
20. A flexible working culture of freedom & responsibility
21. A position that enables you to have an impact on 1’000s of people and the future of the company
22. An international, passionate team of demonstrated extraordinary achievements with a strong collaborative mindset and a drive to make a positive difference