Bioinformatics Engineer - Function
As molecular data generation and frontier model intelligence grows, new approaches to data analysis are needed across the biotech industry. Latch is building intelligent, high performance agents for biological data analysis, empowering over 5,000 scientists across 150+ R&D labs to handle data from instrument-to-insights. We're seeking a BioEngineer for Functional Biology to join our FunctionBench, working at the frontier of what artificial intelligence can achieve in biology.
About the Role
You will contribute to our technical approach for evaluating how AI agents reason through biological function: recovering and interpreting experimental evidence to make informed decisions about binding, stability, immune escape, viral fitness, toxin potency, and protein design. Working with software engineers and biologists, you'll build ground-truth benchmark datasets (drawn from real discovery and development programs) that rigorously test whether agents can perform the critical quantitative reasoning steps that human scientists execute: parsing noisy assay data, inferring mechanism, and predicting functional outcomes. Your hands-on expertise in functional biology assays and computational modeling will define how we measure agent capability in understanding and reasoning about biological sequences and structures.
Requirements
- Hands-on experience in biochemistry, biophysics, bioengineering, synthetic biology, virology, microbiology, immunology, or a closely related field
- Direct experience generating or analyzing functional-assay data (titration curves, deep mutational scanning, potency assays, cell-based readouts, etc.) OR computational protein design
- Comfort with quantitative modeling applied to noisy experimental data
- Proficiency in Python and/or R for data analysis & visualization
- Familiarity with at least one of:
- Binding affinity & stability (Tite-seq, SPR/BLI, biophysical characterization)
- Immune escape & immunogenicity assessment
- Viral fitness, host-range, or zoonotic spillover evaluation
- Toxin potency or antimicrobial/antiviral resistance
- Protein design or structure-guided functional design
- Gain-of-function or molecular mechanism investigation
Nice-to-Have
- Experience designing or troubleshooting functional assays (ELISA, cell-based, biochemical)
- Familiarity with deep learning applied to protein design or functional prediction
- Exposure to regulatory or safety considerations in bioengineering
Compensation & Logistics
- OTE 120k - 180k - Performance based pay
- Free meals onsite (lunch and dinner)
- Waterfront office in China Basin, San Francisco
- Full-time, in-person (can be remote)