Startup Operations Generalist

Adaptyv is building an automated lab that lets AI agents run biology experiments.

We're entering the era of agentic science where AI models can now design novel proteins, propose hypotheses, and iterate on experimental results. But they can't run the experiments themselves - that's still a manual, months-long process. We're building the infrastructure that gives AI agents access to the physical world.

We are one of the fastest growing biotech companies, trusted by leading biopharmas, frontier AI labs, and the techbio companies pushing the field forward. This is a rare chance to help advance some of the most important work happening in biotech today.

Our automated lab is powered by a deep software + hardware stack: lab instruments worth millions of USD reverse-engineered into API-controllable hardware, dozens of devices orchestrated through complex workflows, full observability on everything that happens in the lab, processing pipelines for messy physical-world data, and AI systems that troubleshoot production results and accelerate assay development.

We’re growing rapidly and are hiring for talented people to scale and support the massive demand for AI-driven wet lab experimentation.

About the Role

We are growing fast and opening a second lab in London. Every new person, contract, invoice and payroll run lands on someone's desk. You own that desk.

This is the operations generalist seat: finance admin, payroll, people operations, hiring logistics, and whatever else the company needs to run well. You own the machinery so that everyone else spends their time on the lab.

This is not a strategy role and not a pure HR role. It is hands-on, and most of the work is making sure things happen correctly and on time, then making sure they happen without you next time.

What You'll Do

• Run payroll and people admin. Monthly payroll and the relationship with our payroll provider, contracts, onboarding and offboarding, benefits and pension, leave and absence. Every person gets paid correctly and every new hire has a laptop, accounts and a contract on day one.

• Run the finance back office. Supplier invoices and payment runs, customer invoicing and collections, expense and card reconciliation, and the monthly hand-off to our external accountants.

• Keep hiring moving. Interview scheduling, candidate logistics, NDAs, work-trial setup and offer paperwork in Ashby. You make sure the hiring process never stalls.

• Keep us compliant. Swiss and UK employment rules, permits and visas, insurance, VAT filings, company registers. You are not a lawyer or an accountant, but you know when to call one and you make sure deadlines never surprise us.

• Own general operations. Office and lab-site logistics, vendor and software contracts, renewals, company-wide tools and access. When something is nobody's job, it is yours until it has an owner.

• Automate all of the above. Payroll, invoicing, our ATS and our ledger all have APIs. The goal is that each process you take over runs with less manual work every quarter.

What We're Looking For

• You have run operations at a fast-growing startup. Several years covering some mix of finance admin, payroll, HR and office operations, ideally as the first or second person doing it. You have built processes, not only followed them.

• Detail-obsessed. A wrong payslip or a missed filing is a real problem for a real person. You check the numbers before anyone asks.

• AI-native. It's 2026. We run on Claude Code across the company, and you use AI tools and scripts to automate your own work. You check what they produce and stand behind the result. The more software engineering experience you have, the better. If your instinct is that operations is a spreadsheet-and-inbox job, we will frustrate each other.

• Swiss or UK employment and payroll experience is a plus. Social charges, pension, permits.

• Self-starter. Nobody hands you a prioritized queue. You see what is broken or about to break, and you fix it.

• Trustworthy with everything. Salaries, contracts, personal data and company finances all cross your desk.

• English required.

Application deadline

We are reviewing applicants on a rolling basis.