AI Neuroscientist

Seniority: Experienced specialist · Location: Remote anywhere, hybrid, or onsite in San Francisco · Work model: Full-time, flexible schedule; a few pod check-ins per week · Employment type: Contractor · Engagement: Full-time 1099 contractor engagement, or W-8BEN internationally, with no end date

About the company

Our client is a biotechnology research company. It works with AI labs and pharmaceutical organizations to evaluate whether agents can handle reasoning required in biological workflows. The company is focused on connecting wet-lab science, bioinformatics, and AI to make biological data analysis and scientific decision-making more rigorous and accessible.

About the role

As an AI Neuroscientist, you will be the scientific authority on ground truth for neuroscience benchmarks, testing whether AI agents can reason like expert neuroscientists. You will work with software engineers and neuroscientists to build tasks and datasets spanning normal nervous-system function and disease. Your judgment will define the standard against which agent outputs are evaluated, from experimental design and evidence interpretation to research and R&D decisions.

What you'll do

• Define what expert reasoning looks like for a research question or R&D decision, and write gold-standard answers with the rationale an experienced neuroscientist would defend.
• Design realistic research scenarios across the workflow, from hypothesis and target selection through model-system choice, experimental design, data processing, and inference.
• Curate multi-modal data bundles spanning electrophysiology, calcium imaging, EEG/sEEG, MRI/PET, single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, histopathology, behavior, and biofluid markers.
• Pair basic-science and disease tasks to test whether an understanding of normal function transfers to pathology.
• Partner with software engineers to turn scientific judgment into new workflows.
• Test whether agents choose the right model system and unit of analysis, and recognize when rodent, iPSC, or organoid findings will not translate to human disease.
• Adjudicate contested claims in the literature by deciding what the data supports, what it does not, and which experiment would settle the question.
• Interrogate agent reasoning step by step and challenge conclusions that are fluent and textbook-correct but would not survive lab meeting, peer review, or a go/no-go decision.
• Pinpoint where agents go wrong, explain why a step fails, describe what an expert would do instead, and identify what evidence would change the call.
• Score agent confidence, rewarding explicit uncertainty over overconfident binary calls when evidence is incomplete.

Must-have

• PhD or MD/PhD in neuroscience or a closely related field.
• Hands-on neuroscience research experience with first-hand data analysis and a publication record.
• Direct experience analyzing raw data in at least two modalities, including electrophysiology, optical imaging, EEG/sEEG, neuroimaging, single-cell or spatial omics, neuropathology, or quantitative behavior.
• Deep expertise in at least one area: systems/circuit, cellular/molecular, clinical/translational, or computational neuroscience.
• Working fluency across neuroscience system levels.
• Strong command of experimental design and statistics.
• Proficiency in AI agent use, with the judgment to identify where model reasoning is technically correct but scientifically unsound.
• Confidence to overrule an AI agent when the evidence demands it, and openness to update when shown wrong.
• Ability to calibrate confidence and communicate uncertainty rather than defaulting to binary calls.
• Practical understanding of model systems including iPSC neurons, organoids, rodents, non-human primates, and human cohorts.
• Eligibility to work as a US citizen, permanent resident, or OPT holder. STEM OPT extensions and sponsorship are not supported.

Nice-to-have

• Familiarity with core resources including Allen Brain Cell Atlas/BICAN, DANDI/NWB, OpenNeuro/BIDS, IBL, ADNI, PPMI, UK Biobank, and ClinVar/gnomAD.

What's offered

• Full-time contractor engagement with no stated end date.
• Work remotely from anywhere, work in a hybrid model, or work onsite in San Francisco; onsite work is preferred.
• Choose how you work and manage your own schedule, with only a few pod check-ins each week.
• A paid ramp-up period followed by task-based payment.
• Earning potential linked to completed work.
• Radical transparency about what is working, what is not, and how the company is doing.
• A collaborative culture that is opinionated but respectful, focused on solutions, and committed to being against the problem rather than against one another.
• The opportunity to work extensively with AI while contributing original expert judgment.
• Start on the team that best fits your expertise and move across teams as you build a track record.
• Potential to progress quickly into senior roles, particularly for people who perform strongly and bring leadership experience.
• Regular company outings and team activities.
• For onsite team members: catered lunch and dinner daily, an office in San Francisco, and monthly parking when available.
• Exposure to AI labs, pharmaceutical organizations, and biological workflows.

Hiring process

• Intro screen with the Talent Team.
• Take-home project through HackerRank.
• Technical interview with a Member of Technical Staff.
• Culture interview with the executive team.
• Offer.