Material Scientist – Materials Discovery & Library Development (Early Career Scientist)

About Apoha

At Apoha, we are building the Liquid Brain® — a programmable physical sensing platform creating rich, multidimensional fingerprints of materials to unlock faster and smarter material design. Our mission is to redefine how materials are sensed, understood, and designed across industries.

The Role

We are hiring an early career scientist with a strong foundation in material science, physical chemistry, or biophysics, and the drive to grow rapidly into scientific leadership. You may be a recent PhD graduate with exceptional aptitude and broad curiosity, or an industry scientist with 3+ years of R&D experience seeking a dynamic environment to amplify your growth and impact.

What You’ll Do

• Design new class of materials with programmable excitability.
• Design and interpret complex materials (proteins, formulations, polymers, lipids) using our sensing platform and its high-dimensional outputs.
• Shape material library strategy for targeted industry needs.
• Integrate and evaluate orthogonal characterization tools (ITC, DLS, NMR, rheology, microfluidics) to contextualise results.
• Collaborate with customers and the business development team to craft proof-of-concept case studies that translate discoveries into commercial value.
• Work cross-functionally with ML, product, and data science teams to embed experimental insights into our Discovery Platform.
• Prototype rapidly using a combination of physical experimentation and computational tools.

Who You Are

• PhD or Master’s with hands-on research in material design or characterization (proteins, formulations, polymers, or soft matter).
• Industry R&D experience (3+ years) desirable but exceptional PhDs will be considered.
• Demonstrated breadth across material characterisation techniques and ability to explain working principles behind them (optical, mechanical, electrical, chemical, thermal).
• Excellent communicator, synthesizer, and systems thinker.
• Comfortable interfacing with customers or motivated to build these skills quickly.

Important to Have

• Familiarity with Python, VS Code, and AWS SageMaker, or motivation to pick up these tools quickly.
• Interest in deep learning and AI principles (e.g. transformers, AI–materials interfaces).
• Exposure to machine learning or physics-informed modelling.
• Experience with multi-modal datasets and data analysis pipelines.
• Strong prototyping mindset to iterate ideas across code and experimentation.
• Contributions to open science, publications, or science communication.
• Involvement or interest in scientific community building, mentoring, or outreach.

Why Join Us?

We’re Apoha, the team behind the Liquid Brain®. We're pioneering Sensory Intelligence by decoding molecular behaviour. The first step in our journey to giving machines the senses they never had? Building a Liquid Brain® platform capable of improving life-saving drugs, by assessing the developability of antibodies earlier (those proteins our immune system makes to fight off bacteria and viruses).

We’re a group of scientists, engineers, and operators who’ve built and launched successful products at Goldman Sachs, Apple, Amazon, and published 50+ high impact research papers across biophysics, materials science, and thermodynamics—and been featured by Scientific American as one of “13 Discoveries That Could Change Everything”.

At Apoha, science isn’t just the foundation of our product—it’s woven into our every day. Whether it’s a journal club over coffee, a spirited scientific discussion unravelling a complex problem, or a full-company Quarter Demo Day that sparks wild new ideas, we’ve built a place where academic rigor meets startup energy.

Our team is small, flat, and talent-dense across disciplines. We gravitate towards people who are collaborative, curious, and take pride in owning their work end-to-end. We enjoy spirited debate, thinking way beyond the state of the art, and building products that could change how we understand biological materials—forever. We believe in the power of on-site collaboration, and our UK-based team works together in our London office to foster creativity, speed, and connection.

Our investors include Redalpine, Acequia Capital, Seedcamp, Nucleus Capital, Plug and Play, Wilbe and others—and we’re just getting started.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation + stock options.
• Private health insurance.
• Bi-weekly team lunches + regular socials.
• The rare chance to shape the DNA of a company.
• Access to cutting-edge science, a stellar team, and the chance to change the game.

Application Process – Show Us What You’ve Got

To apply, send us your CV and a short note on a material system you have worked on, describing how you integrated multiple sensing or characterization technologies to understand it. We would like to see how you approach material design problems, what's the method behind the madness when it comes to complex materials. We will get back to you to schedule the first technical interview with our team shortly after reviewing your submission! In case of any questions, please reach out to us.

At Apoha, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We strongly encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds, including those from underrepresented groups in tech and science.