---
title: 'Scientist, Biology at Medra'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/scientist-biology-medra-san-francisco-b623fwxcs5a2'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-13'
---

# Scientist, Biology at Medra

- **Company:** Medra
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-06
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-13
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/medraai/f1c3a0b6-1f65-4640-8be9-39841c32198e

## Job description

What We’re Building: At Medra, our mission is to use AI, robotics, and biology to accelerate life science research, with the ultimate goal of eradicating disease. We have been quietly building the foundational layers of our Physical AI Scientist platform: 🤖 Physical AI that can operate scientific instruments with human-level dexterity. 🧪 Scientific AI that can analyze results, reason about next steps, and close the loop autonomously. This is an incredibly ambitious mission, but we believe that a team of ambitious people with high ownership can accomplish incredible things.

The Team:

- We're a team of passionate, mission-driven engineers and scientists from companies like Tesla, Amazon, SpaceX, and Neuralink. We're collaborative and love moving fast, both with our product and on team trips skiing or go-karting!
- As a team, we love nerding out about engineering and robotics — plus other topics like race cars or cooking. We like learning new things and then sharing our new knowledge with each other.
- Our team is opinionated and straightforward. We don't mind intense discussions about design tradeoffs. If we have arguments or miscommunication, we resolve conflicts quickly and empathetically.

The Role: As a scientist on our forward-deployed team, your objective is to embed yourself with your scientific counterparts at the customer, acting as a true partner on their team to ensure that the Medra platform is achieving scientific outcomes and driving value for the organization. You will become an expert in our customer’s science, deeply understanding their scientific requirements and applying the scientific method (hypothesis, design, experimentation, analysis) to test and validate the fidelity of our Physical AI Scientist platform for their workflows. You will be in close communication with our end users (scientists) and have your eyes and ears on the ground to help us get ahead of any issues, while taking any insights and learnings from the customer back to the company to guide improvements to our product. Internally, you will partner closely with the engagement manager and forward-deployed engineers to drive a successful deployment. You will work alongside an elite team of robotics, software, and hardware engineers to provide scientific oversight during scoping, build, and deployment. You will be a platform super-user who understands the strengths and limitations of our platform, and can apply creativity (& scientific intuition) to solve challenging problems. We’re looking for someone who acts with urgency and thrives under pressure. This is a unique opportunity to use your skillset to what will be a step-change in drug discovery through artificial intelligence and robotics, and will offer significantly more exposure than working in a traditional biotech or pharma role.

In This Role, You Will:

- Be the scientific subject matter expert - understand customer requirements and provide biological context to guide scoping, product development, and capability prioritization.
- Design & execute wet-lab experiments to validate Medra’s autonomous Physical AI against scientific KPIs/metrics
- Deploy on-site to our customer’s labs - embed with their scientists to validate the science, conduct hands-on training on the robot & instruments, and provide ongoing support as they ramp up usage
- Own the installation, QC, and troubleshooting/error-handing for all laboratory instruments on the Physical AI platform
- Support internal R&D on new protocols and assays, and explore emerging technologies & techniques
- Keep detailed experimental records and documentation (SOPs) for all workflows
- Communicate results clearly, succinctly, and on-time

Let’s Talk If You Have:

- Master's degree + 3 years of experience OR PhD in biological sciences or related field
- Deep scientific expertise as evidenced by a track record of top-tier publications / presentations
- Excellent interpersonal skills and a demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively within a team.
- Innate curiosity about science and technology

(OPTIONAL) Bonus Points If You Have:

- Expertise in adapting scientific workflows for execution with robotics and automation equipment / instrumentation
- Hands-on experience with emerging AI/ML tools and technologies
- Familiarity with enterprise software platforms and integrations with lab systems (ELN, LIMS, etc.).
- Experience in dynamic, start-up environments.

What we offer:

- An opportunity to fundamentally change the way that scientific research happens
- Fast-paced, creative, and collaborative work environment
- Significant equity ownership
- 401k
- Medical insurance and dental Insurance
- Unlimited PTO
- Weekday lunches and dinners

This position is 100% in-person, you must be able to come on-site to our San Francisco office. We offer relocation benefits for applicants who need to relocate. Travel is required, up to 25-50%. Medra is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies. We value diversity at Medra and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!

## About Medra

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Building autonomous Physical AI for the lab to accelerate scientific discovery by executing and optimizing experiments in a closed loop.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States (340 Pine Street, Suite 100)
- **Founded**: 2021 (some sources cite 2022 – conflicting reports)
- **Founders**: Michelle Lee (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Life sciences automation, laboratory robotics, AI-driven experimental design
- **Target customers**: B2B – biopharma companies, academic research labs, government agencies (e.g., DARPA)
- **Mission / purpose**: Unlock breakthroughs at scale by tightly integrating AI scientific reasoning with physical experimentation.

## Products & Services
- **Physical AI Lab (Medra Lab 001 – ML001)**: A fully autonomous robotic workcell that executes wet-lab protocols (e.g., CRISPR, cell culture, NGS) using computer vision and robotic manipulation. Instrument-agnostic and modular.
- **AI Experimentalist**: The scientific reasoning layer that translates natural-language research goals into executable experiment plans, coordinates multi-step protocols, analyzes results, and refines methods in a closed loop.
- **Platform Type**: Physical AI + Scientific AI as a service (on-site deployment or remote operation via ML001).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of $63M (Series A of $52M closed December 2025, preceded by $11M pre-seed in October 2025 and a non-equity assistance from PharmStars in 2023)
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Human Capital (lead), Lux Capital, Menlo Ventures, Catalio Capital, Neo, 776 (Seven Seven Six), Fusion Fund, Nat Friedman & Daniel Gross
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount grew 100% YoY (31 employees as of mid-2026)
  - Launched ML001 in San Francisco (April 2026) — largest autonomous lab in the U.S.
  - Announced DARPA collaboration (June 2026) to advance natural-language-to-executable-experiment capabilities
  - 8 open positions across biology, engineering, design, and operations

## Competitive Advantages
- **Closed-loop integration**: Combines physical execution with AI-driven experimental design and learning – not just robotic task automation.
- **Instrument-agnostic & modular**: Works with both manual and automated lab instruments, allowing easy swapping of modules and protocols.
- **Natural-language programming**: Scientists can edit protocols in plain English (written or voice).
- **Scalable data generation**: Logs every action, video, and metadata per sample for traceability and model training.

## Strategic Focus
- Expand partnerships with biopharma, academia, and government (DARPA is a key early customer).
- Advance the AI Experimentalist layer to enable full autonomous hypothesis generation and validation.
- Scale deployments of Physical AI Labs on-site and remotely through ML001.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as “intense curiosity and rigorous debate” with clear, direct communication and quick resolution of conflicts through mutual respect.
- **Team**: Community of diverse thinkers, “not just a company but a movement to transform biotechnology.”
- **Work policy**: Likely on-site at the San Francisco lab given the nature of physical robotics; no explicit remote/hybrid policy mentioned.
- **Perks & highlights**: Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI + robotics with a high-impact mission; funded by top-tier VCs; strong engineering culture (43% technical staff, many from Neuralink, Applied Intuition, Amazon, Carnegie Mellon).

## Sources
1. [medra.ai](https://www.medra.ai/)
2. [medra.ai/careers](https://www.medra.ai/careers)
3. [linkedin.com/company/medra-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/medra-ai)
4. [cbinsights.com/company/medra](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/medra)
5. [medra.ai/darpa-collaboration](https://www.medra.ai/darpa-collaboration)
6. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/medraai](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/medraai)

## Other roles at Medra

- [Recruiting Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/recruiting-coordinator-medra-san-francisco-n0m7rv3ttdgn) — San Francisco, CA
- [Research Engineer, Post-training](https://feeny.ai/job/research-engineer-post-training-medra-san-francisco-n7tgf495hyxv) — San Francisco, CA
- [Engagement Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/engagement-manager-medra-san-francisco-0fa0j3w4khy4) — San Francisco, CA
- [Research Associate, Protein Purification & Quality Control](https://feeny.ai/job/research-associate-protein-purification-quality-control-medra-san-francisco-yzz33354ey6f) — San Francisco, CA
- [Scientist, Biophysical Characterization (SPR/BLI)](https://feeny.ai/job/scientist-biophysical-characterization-spr-bli-medra-san-francisco-vrq2zx0x093w) — San Francisco, CA
- [Systems Test Engineer - Contract](https://feeny.ai/job/systems-test-engineer-contract-medra-san-francisco-9mdgvzh03new) — San Francisco, CA
- [Robotics Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-software-engineer-medra-san-francisco-2mg03whcxs8r) — San Francisco, CA
- [Robotics Manufacturing Technician](https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-manufacturing-technician-medra-san-francisco-15ehk6fcfhg4) — San Francisco, CA
- [Full Stack Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-software-engineer-medra-san-francisco-bvht2fk1neme) — San Francisco, CA
- [Tech Lead Manager - Full Stack](https://feeny.ai/job/tech-lead-manager-full-stack-medra-san-francisco-b4qgaw64cnxw) — San Francisco, CA