Physical & Life Scientist
Physical and life scientists in AI companies design and execute experiments across biology, chemistry, and physics to accelerate drug discovery and therapeutic development. These roles span from wet lab work—running immunological assays, synthetic chemistry, and analytical separations—to computational approaches like molecular dynamics simulations and pharmacometric modeling. What distinguishes these scientists is their direct integration with AI-driven platforms: they validate predictions from machine learning models, generate training data for foundation models in biology and chemistry, conduct safety evaluations of AI systems in scientific domains, and translate computational designs into experimental reality. They typically sit within discovery and development teams at TechBio and AI companies, collaborating closely with computational researchers, engineers, and medicinal chemists to bridge the gap between digital prediction and physical validation.
Measured across 27 of 29 open postings.
This role is advertised at one level, so a single figure for the role would describe none of them. Experience and pay are the midpoints for each level on its own.
| Level | Share | Median years | Median pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | 48%(13) | 5 | — |
A dash means too few postings stated it to report a midpoint. Most companies do not publish a salary band, so pay is indicative rather than a market rate. 6 levels with fewer than 10 open postings are not shown.
“leverage AI and emerging technologies to ensure efficient outcomes with a high probability of success”
“Partner with computational biology, AI/ML, and drug discovery teams to analyze, interpret, visualize, and communicate findings from large-scale functional genomics datasets.”
“Evaluate AI-designed molecules and AI-proposed synthetic routes, drive them to experimental readout, and feed results back to research teams”
“bring AI predictions into reality through physics and measurement science”
Skills
What companies are looking for in this role.
Research experiment design
Wet-lab and preclinical research
Drug discovery science
Annotation schema design
Data quality and governance
Research-to-production translation
Supplier and vendor management
Hardware test and validation
AI for scientific discovery
Cross-functional collaboration
Research leadership and strategy
Research rigor and reproducibility
Technical communication
Technical team leadership and mentoring
Technical documentation
Technology
The tools and technologies that define this role.
Open Jobs
29 open Physical & Life Scientist jobs across 8 companies.
Other Research & Science roles
Scientists conducting original research to advance the state of the art in AI, machine learning, and related fields.
Engineers who build the systems, tools, and infrastructure that enable research.
Researchers and engineers doing core model development at AI labs: pre-training, mid- and post-training, reinforcement learning, training data, and model behaviour — the work most often titled "Member of Technical Staff" or "Researcher, Training".
Leaders who manage research teams, set research agendas, and guide scientific strategy.
Scientists who apply machine learning techniques to solve specific product or domain problems.