Community Manager

The opportunity

The researchers, data scientists, and ML engineers driving AI-driven biological discovery do not yet know Substrate exists. The Community Manager is the person who will change that.

This is Substrate's first dedicated community hire. You will build from scratch: the relationships, the channels, the content, the events, and the feedback loops that turn a network of interested researchers into an active, technically engaged community. You will be the external face of Substrate to the AI x biology research world, and the voice of that world inside Substrate.

About Substrate

Substrate is building and operating a network of fully autonomous wet laboratories. We are the critical infrastructure layer for AI-driven biological discovery: cloud-based data production facilities, tightly integrated with AI foundation models, that make high-quality experimental biology as accessible as compute.

We are a small team, four co-founders and a founding hire class now building out, with venture funding and government grants, opening our first node in London and a second node in San Francisco in parallel. The work is hard and the timeline is compressed. We have two scientific verticals live (protein characterisation and functional genomics), a software platform that connects API calls to automated assay execution, and a commercial pipeline that spans foundation model labs, AI biotechs, pharmaceutical companies, and publicly funded research organisations. We are growing to roughly thirty people by early 2027.

The role

You will own Substrate's community function end to end. The immediate priority is establishing Substrate's presence in the communities where our most important potential users and customers already spend time: AI-biology conferences, academic research groups, frontier AI lab developer communities, and the broader open-science data ecosystem.

The obvious operational pieces are real and important: building and managing Substrate's community channels, creating content (technical posts, case studies, event recaps) that demonstrates what the platform can do, representing Substrate at conferences and research events, and tracking engagement in ways that help the commercial, product and science teams make decisions.

Two parts of the role are less standard, and they are why this hire matters so much to Substrate's success.

The first is technical credibility. Substrate's community spans researchers who publish in leading journals and engineers who build training pipelines for frontier models. Community management here is not event coordination and social media scheduling; it is substantive engagement with people who will interrogate the science, the data quality, and the integration architecture. The Community Manager needs to be able to meet them there.

The second is commercial adjacency. Community at Substrate is not a brand exercise. The relationships built through community will directly feed the commercial pipeline, inform pricing and product decisions, and define which customer segments Substrate chooses to serve deeply. You will work closely with Anna, co-founder, who leads partnerships and go-to-market, and you will operate as a genuine commercial, product and science partner.

What you will do in your first twelve months

FIRST 90 DAYS JUL TO SEP 2026

• Map the existing relationships the founding team holds across research institutions, frontier AI labs, pharma and Ai-native biotechs, and the AI-biotech community; understand which are most relevant to a community-first strategy.

• Establish Substrate's presence on the channels where the AI x biology research community spends time: a newsletter, relevant online communities, forums, podcasts, and a cadence for conference participation.

• Publish Substrate's first substantive technical community content: a post or article that demonstrates what the platform does and why it matters to researchers doing AI-driven biology.

• Identify the ten to fifteen research groups, labs, or organisations that should be

• Substrate's first community anchor relationships, and begin active outreach and relationship building.

MONTHS 4 TO 8 OCT 2026 TO FEB 2027

• Build and manage an active community presence around the London node opening: coordinate the launch event, manage researcher outreach, and produce the content that captures what Substrate's first operational period looks like.

• Establish a structured feedback loop between the community and the product and science teams, so that what researchers ask for and struggle with reaches the people who can act on it.

• Build the San Francisco community presence in parallel: identify the key organisations, events, and channels in the Bay Area AI-biology ecosystem and establish Substrate's footprint there.

• Develop a content calendar and production cadence that does not depend on the founding team's time to sustain.

• Refine the community infrastructure: channel selection, moderation policy, engagement metrics, and reporting to the commercial and product teams.

MONTHS 9 TO 12 MAR TO JUN 2027

• Build the community to a size and engagement level where it is a measurable input to commercial pipeline: researcher referrals, inbound interest driven by community content, and a clear record of which community relationships have become or are likely to become commercial relationships.

• Produce a community playbook that documents the channels, content types, event formats, and relationship cadences that work for Substrate's audience.

• Continue building the community infrastructure needed for the San Francisco node: what an active and engaged community looks like in the Bay Area.

Who you are

The pattern we are looking for combines genuine scientific credibility with commercial experience at a technical company. You will have spent five or more years close to research communities, in a developer relations, scientific outreach, partnerships, or community role at an AI, tech or biotech company. You understand how researchers and data scientists think, what they find credible, and how to earn their attention and trust.

You are a strong communicator. You can write a technical post that a principal scientist will find rigorous and a graduate student will find accessible. You can run a panel discussion at a conference, write a newsletter, and manage an online community, and you bring a consistent point of view to all three. You are not looking for a role where the output is impressions and follower counts; you are looking for a role where the output is trust, relationships and BD.

You are comfortable building infrastructure that does not yet exist. The community playbook has not been written. The channels have not been established. The question of what Substrate's community is for and who belongs to it is still open.

MUST HAVE

• Five or more years in a community, developer relations, scientific outreach, or technical partnerships role at a company serving research, life sciences, or AI scientists.

• A demonstrated ability to build a technical community from a low base: growing engagement, producing credible content, and managing relationships with researchers, scientists, or engineers.

• Strong written communication skills, with a track record of producing technical or scientific content for a specialist audience.

• Scientific or technical literacy sufficient to engage substantively with biology, data science, and AI practitioners.

• Willingness to be based in London or San Francisco, with travel to the other location and to key scientific conferences

NICE TO HAVE

• Scientific background (BSc or higher) in biology, biochemistry, computer science, or a related field.

• Experience in a developer relations or community role at a platform or infrastructure company.

• Existing relationships within the AI x biology research community AI biotechs, frontier AI labs, academic research groups, or pharma R&D.

• Familiarity with the conference and events landscape for AI-driven biological discovery.

• Experience with data or API product communities.

Why this is unusual

Most community management roles sit inside companies whose community is already defined: a user base that exists, a product that is live, a channel that has followers. The job is to grow and manage something that has already started. This is not that.

Substrate's community is not yet built. The audience spans researchers, data scientists, ML engineers, and computational biologists working at the intersection of AI and wet-lab biology; it includes people in academic research groups, philanthropic foundations, frontier AI labs, pharma R&D, and biotech startups, all with different professional contexts and different needs from a community of this type. Part of the job is working out who the community is for and why it exists, before building it.

The commercial adjacency is also unusual. In most companies, community and commercial are kept at arm's length: community builds trust, commercial closes deals, and the two teams share data and tooling but operate separately. At Substrate, the community function is one of the primary go-to-market channels, and the Community Manager is a genuine commercial partner.

Compensation and equity

Compensation is competitive against London and San Francisco market rates for a senior community hire at a venture-backed company, calibrated to the seniority and scope of this role. Equity is meaningful, on the standard four-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff.

We are happy to discuss the structure and philosophy in more detail with shortlisted candidates.

We sponsor visas for exceptional candidates at both the London and San Francisco locations. How we work

Hybrid, with a strong bias toward in-person time at your base location. London candidates are expected to be in person at our King's Cross lab and office most working days during the first six months; San Francisco candidates are expected to be in person at the SF node on a similar basis once the node is operational. Remote days are available and we are sensible about it, but this is a relationship-intensive role and the in-person time matters. 30 days annual leave. A learning and development budget. Quarterly offsites. We are building the rest of the benefits package as the team arrives.

The team you will join

You will report to Anna Huyghues-Despointes, co-founder, who owns partnerships and go-to-market at Substrate. Anna was previously Chief Corporate Development and Strategy Officer at Owkin and an investor at Balderton Capital. You will work closely with the full founding team: Oli Hoy, who leads infrastructure build and lab delivery; Alexey Morgunov, who leads the AI and scientific intelligence work; and Mostafa ElSayed, CEO and founder of Automata, who leads the investor and government engagement side of Substrate.

Substrate is a small team growing to roughly thirty people by early 2027. This is a founding-team-adjacent hire; you will have direct access to the people making product, scientific, and strategic decisions, and your work will directly shape those decisions.

How to apply

Apply via Ashby. Include a short message describing who you are, why this role makes sense for you now, and what you think the hardest part of building a technical research community from scratch will be is more useful to us than a cover letter.

Attach your CV, and, if you have produced content you are proud of, a link to it.

Our process is three stages: a first conversation with Anna, a short content task, and a founder team session in person.

If you are not certain you are a fit, send a note anyway. The community for Substrate has not been built; we are as interested in how you think about what it should be as we are in your experience doing something similar.

Substrate is an equal opportunity employer. We make hiring decisions on merit, scope-fit, and the strength of the working relationship we expect to build with each hire. Applications welcome from candidates of any background.