---
title: 'Foundation and generative models for biomolecules at Inceptive'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/foundation-and-generative-models-for-biomolecules-inceptive-berlin-germany-or-hb7a3f5z7rea'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Foundation and generative models for biomolecules at Inceptive

- **Company:** Inceptive
- **Location:** Berlin Germany OR Palo Alto CA OR Zurich, Switzerland
- **Posted:** 2025-10-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/inceptive/jobs/4961579007

## Job description

At Inceptive, you will drive forward development that could help billions of people. To accomplish this, you will be part of a collaborative, [antedisciplinary](https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010006) team building our biological software.

The design space of biomolecules is unimaginably vast — far beyond what can be explored experimentally. Yet within this space lie molecules with properties essential for new medicines. Our machine learning models learn to design therapeutic biomolecules with specific, desirable functions.

We advance the state of the art in molecular design by training large-scale foundation models and developing cutting edge generative approaches. The models learn from diverse heterogeneous datasets and are refined through focused fine-tuning and feedback from experiments. Key to progress is a team that combines exceptional machine learning expertise with thorough domain understanding.

You will collaborate closely with other machine learning researchers and engineers, as well as computational and experimental biologists, to advance these models and translate their capabilities into real therapeutic designs.

Your Mission, should you choose to accept it

- Embody our vision of an antedisciplinary environment and embrace learning about areas outside of your traditional area of expertise
- Develop, implement, train, and iteratively improve state-of-the-art models for biomolecule design
- Analyze, visualize, and communicate results to support team efforts in improving models and data
- Create, deploy, and refine tools for efficient, reliable machine learning experimentation and production
- Work with biologists to collect data for the training and evaluation of generative models of biomolecules
- Provide mentorship and technical direction to team members as appropriate

## Qualifications

- 3+ years of hands-on experience developing ML models
- Demonstrated track record of implementing, training, improving advanced machine learning models
- Highly capable programmer fluent in Python ecosystem and PyTorch or similar deep learning framework
- Availability to work with team members across US and Europe, with meetings starting at 8am PT and ending at 7pm CET
- Readiness to travel several times a year for company retreats and business events
- We value the benefits of in-person collaboration and expect candidates to primarily work from our office locations

## Preferred technical skills

- PhD in AI/ML, computer science, computational biology, physics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience (e.g., industry experience, research, or advanced technical expertise)
- Strong skills in designing, executing, and documenting machine learning experiments
- Practical experience with modern generative models
- Strong software engineering skills, in particular for data processing, evaluation of ML models, compute cluster orchestration
- Experience with large-scale model training, foundation models, model parallelism, multi-node training
- Experience with bio sequence data and datasets — various genomic and protein data, sequencing, functional assays, etc
- Knowledge of biochemistry, molecular/cell biology, and drug development

## Compensation

$200K – $275K + Bonus + Equity

## What we offer

- A competitive compensation package
- 30 days paid vacation per year
- Comprehensive health insurance for US based Beginners
- 401K with company match for US based Beginners and Direktversicherung for German Beginners
- Quarterly company-wide retreats
- Monthly wellness benefit
- Budget for multiple visits per year to our offices in Berlin, Palo Alto or Switzerland
- Learning & Development budget to attend conferences, take courses, or otherwise invest in your professional growth
- A buddy to help you get settled

*Varies by country and does not apply to internships

At Inceptive, we are creating tools to develop increasingly powerful biological software for the rational design of novel, broadly accessible medicines and biotechnologies previously out of reach. Our team brings together vast expertise in molecular biology, machine learning, and software engineering, and we are all working towards becoming antedisciplinary, meaning we deepen the knowledge we have in our area of expertise while also expanding our knowledge of completely new fields.

We approach our goals with a Beginner's mind, humbly and with fresh eyes, and aim to become the pioneers of a new discipline rooted in biology as much as in deep learning, whose impact will be realized together with out-of-the-box thinkers in business and entrepreneurship, defying established categorizations. We are building a company culture centered around growth, learning, and discovery. We believe in humility and open-mindedness in how we approach each other, as well as problems we don't yet have solutions for.

It is the policy of Inceptive to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital status, citizenship, national origin, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. Inceptive prohibits any such discrimination or harassment.

Inceptive is also committed to welcoming and providing accommodations to people with disabilities. Please let us know if you need any accommodations throughout your application process.

## About Inceptive

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Inceptive builds end-to-end foundation models that learn to design sequence-based medicines (e.g., mRNA, siRNA, ASOs, peptides) by training on diverse observations of life.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Not publicly available (company is "founded by AI and biochemistry pioneers")

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Biotechnology / Artificial Intelligence for drug discovery
- **Target customers**: B2B – pharmaceutical and biotech partners (e.g., Alnylam Pharmaceuticals)
- **Mission statement**: "To positively impact everyone through biological software" – from the careers page.

## Products & Services
- **Foundation Models for Drug Design**: A suite of deep learning models trained on heterogeneous data (sequence, function, structure) to generate novel therapeutic molecules. The models are designed to extrapolate beyond known molecules, yielding superior drug candidates.
- **Wet Lab Validation**: In-house experimental lab that rapidly ranks models and validates designs in vitro and in vivo, closing the in silico-to-biology loop.
- **Partnership Platform**: Co-designs novel medicines with leading drugmakers, providing custom models, data generation, and knowledge transfer.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – **$120M** (latest Series A of $100M, closed approximately 2023) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/inceptive)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz, NVentures, Artis Ventures, Section 32, Obvious Ventures [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/inceptive); Strategic collaboration with **Alnylam Pharmaceuticals** (up to $2B total, with $30M upfront including equity) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/inceptive)
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - June 2026: Alnylam partnership valued up to $2B, significantly boosting Inceptive’s credibility and pipeline access.
  - Headcount *conflicting reports*: 21 employees per CB Insights, 40 per PitchBook – both recently cited; fast-growing team with offices in Palo Alto, Berlin, and Zurich [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/inceptive) [pitchbook.com](https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/495561-34)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Antedisciplinary culture**: No titles; everyone is a "Beginner" – cross-training across biology, AI, and engineering to break silos.
- **Wet + Dry integration**: Rapid iterative cycles between computational design and experimental validation, reducing time from idea to drug candidate.
- **Model generalizability**: Trains on massive heterogeneous data (public, in-house, partner) to generalize across programs, unlike structure-only approaches.
- **Extrapolation ability**: Proprietary algorithms designed to iteratively improve molecules beyond the best seen in training data.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Scaling experiments for AI-designed medicines, advancing commercial strategy, and expanding partnerships (e.g., Alnylam) to bring more candidates to the clinic.
- **Geographic expansion**: Building teams across Palo Alto, Berlin, and Zurich.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: "Beginners only" – humble, curiosity-driven environment where everyone learns from each other. No formal titles, emphasizing collaboration over hierarchy.
- **Work model**: Hybrid/office presence expected at one of three hubs (Palo Alto, Berlin, Zurich); roles range from AI research to wet-lab science.
- **Notable perks**: Work on "the beach" where wet and dry science meet; direct impact on designing real medicines.
- **Engineering culture**: Strong emphasis on deep learning, high-throughput data generation, and continuous in silico/in vitro cycles.

## Sources
1. [inceptive.com](https://inceptive.com/)
2. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/inceptive](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/inceptive)
3. [cbinsights.com - Inceptive profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/inceptive)
4. [pitchbook.com - Inceptive profile](https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/495561-34)

## Other roles at Inceptive

- [Building the Experimental Engine for Models of Life](https://feeny.ai/job/building-the-experimental-engine-for-models-of-life-inceptive-palo-alto-s2n4k82x0ck8) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Data selection and quality evaluation for biological foundation models](https://feeny.ai/job/data-selection-and-quality-evaluation-for-biological-foundation-models-z1cpt3r5mnr4) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Computational design of biological experiments for model development](https://feeny.ai/job/computational-design-of-biological-experiments-for-model-development-inceptive-fqhxd5ef2mgb) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Secure Data Infrastructure for AI](https://feeny.ai/job/secure-data-infrastructure-for-ai-inceptive-berlin-j1j4rq3d43w8) — Berlin, Germany
- [Accelerating impact through partnerships](https://feeny.ai/job/accelerating-impact-through-partnerships-inceptive-palo-alto-etf7nd47r14a) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Leading Data-Driven Lab for AI Medicines](https://feeny.ai/job/leading-data-driven-lab-for-ai-medicines-inceptive-palo-alto-wnh3f1anxnq2) — Palo Alto, CA
- [High-throughput data generation to advance ML design](https://feeny.ai/job/high-throughput-data-generation-to-advance-ml-design-inceptive-palo-alto-7qeq4fb84hgq) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Advancing Inceptive's commercial strategy](https://feeny.ai/job/advancing-inceptive-s-commercial-strategy-inceptive-palo-alto-s2v5zv9xftke) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Open Apply](https://feeny.ai/job/open-apply-inceptive-palo-alto-k5b609n7v26m) — Palo Alto, CA / Berlin, Germany / Zurich, Switzerland