Senior Research Engineer

Full-time · Head Office (Farringdon, London)

About Us

Basecamp Research is dedicated to solving major challenges in the life sciences by exploring Beyond Known Biology. Our teams build frontier AI models using BaseData, the world's largest ethically-sourced and globally representative biological dataset. Our Global Research Team collects and curates our own biological data through partnerships with more than 152 organizations in 28 countries, giving its AI access to genetic diversity that doesn't exist for models trained on public database sources. This enables Basecamp Research to design novel protein sequences and biological systems that can accelerate therapeutic research and development.

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Research Engineer to join our AI Research team in London. You will work on the technology, systems and infrastructure that power our frontier research, from accelerators and distributed training pipelines to experiment frameworks and the tooling that lets a small team operate at scale. You will sit within the research team, understand the science, and make decisions that directly shape what research is possible and how we run it. The best research engineers shape what can be done and how fast ideas move from whiteboard to result. We train large-scale models on the world's richest biological datasets. The scale we work at is unique and the engineering challenges are too: custom architectures on novel data modalities, training runs that push hardware limits, and a pace of experimentation that demands robust and flexible tooling. You will be the person who makes all of that work reliably, and who figures out how to make it work better. You'll report to the Head of AI Research and work closely with researchers covering genomics, computational biology, and large-scale deep learning. You'll also collaborate with the broader platform engineering and data teams across the company.

About You

• PhD in computer science, physics, mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent depth of experience gained through building AI systems at scale.
• You have worked at a frontier AI research lab where research engineers are treated as first-class contributors.
• You know how to run large-scale experiments and you've been part of making that actually happen at scale.
• You are comfortable across the full stack: distributed training frameworks, GPU/accelerator optimisation, data pipelines, experiment tracking, and making research reproducible and reliable.
• You have experience down to the level of CUDA kernels or XLA.
• You have contributed to open source projects like PyTorch, JAX, MLX or similar.
• You care about research outcomes as much as system uptime.
• You form opinions about what experiments to run and how to design them.
• You can read papers and research reports and figure out what it would take to implement them as efficiently as possible.
• A background in mathematics or physics is strongly preferred.
• You have strong software engineering practices: clean code, good testing habits, focus on performance, and an instinct for building systems that other people can actually use.
• You are genuinely curious about biology.
• Low ego, collaborative instincts, and a startup mentality.

Nice to Have

• Experience with biological data: genomic sequences, protein structures, molecular data, or similar.
• Familiarity with our broader tech stack: Kubernetes, Dagster, or similar orchestration and infrastructure tools.
• Contributions to open-source ML frameworks or research codebases.
• Publications at major venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, or JMLR).

What we offer in return

• Impactful Mission: This is a rare chance to do work that genuinely matters. You'll join a talented, fast-moving team, access unique biological datasets at scale, and see your contributions shape real breakthroughs in AI and curative therapeutics.
• Collaborative Culture: You'll be surrounded by world-class engineers, scientists, and researchers who care deeply about their work and about each other.
• High Growth: We truly believe in investing in our people; we make coaching available to team members during steep growth journeys and we have twice yearly promotion opportunities.
• Comprehensive Benefits: We've built a benefits package people value, including competitive salary, equity, and private healthcare with no medical history exclusions.

We are committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of ethnic or national origin, race, religion, sex, age, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, gender identity or any other basis. If you have a disability or additional need that needs accommodating do let us know.