Full-Time

Director of Engineering

Machine Learning Platform

Posted on 5/7/2026

Isomorphic Labs

Isomorphic Labs

201-500 employees

AI-powered drug discovery and development

No salary listed

London, UK

Hybrid

Three days on-site per week required.

Category
Engineering Management (1)
Required Skills
Service Mesh
Kubernetes
Microsoft Azure
Computer Networking
AWS
Observability
Google Cloud Platform
Requirements
  • Experience in software engineering, with a significant portion focused on ML infrastructure, platform, or site reliability engineering.
  • Demonstrated experience in a leadership role, managing multiple engineering teams and managers.
  • Deep understanding of distributed systems, cloud architectures (AWS, Azure, GCP), and modern infrastructure technologies.
  • Proven experience with running horizontal Platform Engineering teams
  • Strong background in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles and practices, including incident management, observability, performance optimization, and automation.
  • Familiarity with data infrastructure and systems supporting machine learning/prediction models.
  • Excellent communication, interpersonal, and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Demonstrated ability to attract, hire, retain, and develop top engineering talent.
  • Strategic thinker with a proven ability to define and execute complex technical roadmaps.
  • Strong problem-solving skills and a data-driven approach to decision-making.
  • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
Responsibilities
  • Define and execute the long-term vision and strategy for our foundational infrastructure, aligning with company goals and anticipating future needs.
  • Lead, mentor, and inspire a diverse team of engineering managers and individual contributors across multiple disciplines (ML Platform, Tech Infrastructure, SRE). Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, continuous learning, and accountability.
  • Oversee the development and evolution of our core platform, ensuring it provides robust, scalable, and developer-friendly services for all engineering teams. This includes aspects like service mesh, container orchestration, CI/CD pipelines, and internal tooling.
  • Lead the teams responsible for building and maintaining the underlying systems that power our user-facing applications, focusing on performance, reliability, and seamless user experiences.
  • Guide the development and operation of the infrastructure supporting our prediction models, ensuring high availability, low latency, and efficient data processing for machine learning initiatives.
  • Drive the strategy and execution for our core technical infrastructure, including networking, compute, storage, and data centers (on-prem and/or cloud). Optimize for cost, performance, and security.
  • Champion and embed SRE principles across the organization. Oversee the SRE team responsible for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of our critical systems through proactive monitoring, incident management, and automation.
  • Establish and enforce best practices for infrastructure operations, including monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, disaster recovery, and security. Drive continuous improvement in system stability and uptime.
  • Partner closely with product engineering teams, security, data science, and other stakeholders to understand their needs and deliver foundational solutions that accelerate product development and innovation.
  • Evaluate and manage relationships with key internal partners to ensure optimal value and performance.
  • Manage the budget for the Foundations Engineering organization, optimizing resource allocation and identifying cost-saving opportunities.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience in a high-growth, fast-paced environment.
  • Experience building and scaling infrastructure for Biotech, Life science

Isomorphic Labs uses artificial intelligence to speed up drug discovery and development. It applies machine learning and computational methods—building predictive and generative models—to accelerate how drugs are designed and how medical research is conducted. The company differentiates itself by combining the AI breakthroughs from Google DeepMind with Alphabet backing, enabling fast experimentation and scaling across biology while maintaining startup-style agility. Its goal is to bring safer, more effective therapies to market more quickly by advancing AI-driven medicine using deep learning, reinforcement learning, and other advanced techniques.

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Late Stage VC

Total Funding

$2.6B

Headquarters

London, United Kingdom

Founded

2021

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Advancing AI-designed drugs to human trials in oncology and immunology via Eli Lilly, Novartis partnerships.
  • Nearing $2 billion funding round after $600 million raise led by Thrive Capital in April 2025.
  • Appointing Dr. Ben Wolf as CMO establishes US presence for clinical expansion.

What critics are saying

  • Exscientia gains first AI-drug approval in Phase III trials March 2026, diverting Eli Lilly partnerships.
  • FDA March 2026 guidance mandates 5-year data, halting IsoDDE trials without $500M wet-lab spend.
  • OpenAI o1-pro with Sanofi data outperforms IsoDDE by 25% on affinities per January 2026 benchmarks.

What makes Isomorphic Labs unique

  • IsoDDE doubles AlphaFold 3 accuracy on protein-ligand benchmarks announced February 2026.
  • IsoDDE identifies novel binding pockets from amino acid sequences in seconds.
  • Proprietary models predict binding affinities exceeding physics-based methods at fraction of cost.

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Benefits

Hybrid Work Options

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

3%

1 year growth

3%

2 year growth

1%
Isomorphic Labs
Jun 17th, 2025
Isomorphic Labs appoints Dr. Ben Wolf as Chief Medical Officer and establishes US Presence

Isomorphic Labs appoints Dr. Ben Wolf as Chief Medical Officer and establishes US Presence.

Forbes
Jun 11th, 2025
Nvidia Announces Massive New Initiatives In Pharma And Clinical Research

Nvidia has quickly become a leader in the AI ecosystem. NurPhoto via Getty ImagesFounder and CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, announced today in his GTC Paris keynote that the company has inked two new large partnerships to advance the company’s work in healthcare and life-sciences.The first is with European based global pharmaceutical giant, Novo Nordisk, to advance drug discovery and development efforts by leveraging an existing partnership with the Danish Centre for AI Innovation’s (DCAI) Gefion AI supercomputer. Novo Nordisk will utilize Gefion and a variety of Nvidia platforms such as BioNeMo, Nim, and Omniverse to build and develop customized AI models, foster agentic AI workflows and even create simulation and digital twin environments to advance physical AI applications. The primary goal will be to use these tools to better understand potential drug candidates and structures in order to build molecular models that can further the drug discovery and development pipeline.Rory Kelleher, senior director of business development for life sciences at Nvidia, explains that drug discovery can claim massive benefits from generative AI, especially in the R&D space. Mishal Patel, senior vice president of AI and digital innovation at Novo Nordisk, comments that the combination of Gefion and Nvidia’s computing platforms is an unprecedented approach and will enable the building of custom models that can truly empower better efficiency and efficacy. More generally, Gefion is a computational behemoth and has been used by numerous enterprises to advance their computing capabilities; for example, Danish startup Teton has been working with Nvidia and Gefion to build out an AI care companion for clinical settings.The second partnership that Nvidia announced today is with IQVIA to advance the use of AI agents in the clinical research and commercialization spaces

BW Healthcare World
Jun 2nd, 2025
Isomorphic Labs Raises $600M in Q1 2025

UK biopharma venture financing surged to $1.1 billion in Q1 2025, doubling from $550 million in Q4 2024, driven by Isomorphic Labs' $600 million and Verdiva Bio's $411 million rounds. Despite global downturns, UK investment rose from $827 million in 2022 to $1.7 billion in 2024. However, US investors funded most of Q1 2025's total, highlighting reliance on overseas capital. UK initiatives aim to boost domestic investment, but upcoming drug-pricing policy changes may increase costs.

Labiotech.eu
Apr 24th, 2025
21 Uk Biotech Companies You Should Know About

Newsletter Signup - Under Article / In Page"*" indicates required fields The UK is home to several biotech hubs, including the famous ‘golden triangle’, made up of Oxford, Cambridge, and London. In fact, after a $700 million surge in funding in the third quarter of 2023 started an upward trajectory, the UK biotech scene is now one of the most vibrant in Europe, laying the foundation for numerous companies to develop innovative technologies, some of which have spun out of the nation’s most prestigious universities. In this article, we take a look at 21 UK biotech companies you should know about. Amphista Therapeutics Disease areas: Oncology and neurologyTechnology: Targeted protein degradationRecent news: Unveiled new data demonstrating the potential of its protein degraders in animal modelsAmphista Therapeutics is focused on transforming the lives of patients with severe diseases, with a particular focus on cancer. The company is applying its proprietary Amphista degrader platform to advance new approaches in targeted protein degradation (TPD). Its next-generation bifunctional molecules use a novel approach that makes use of a wider range of the body’s own innate protein degrading mechanisms than those used by most other TPD companies. This proprietary approach offers the potential to overcome many of the limitations seen with current TPD approaches – such as those associated with the use of a narrow range of protein degrading mechanisms – providing the opportunity to treat a wider range of diseases. In May 2023, the UK biotech company announced that it had achieved its first discovery milestone under its collaboration and license agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb

Sifted
Apr 16th, 2025
Isomorphic Labs raises $600m in Q1

In Q1, European startups raised €12.8 billion, with healthtech leading, including Isomorphic Labs' $600 million raise. AI agent startups also saw significant investment, with 61 deals totaling €827 million. Despite fewer deals, larger rounds were common, with a median equity deal size of €3 million. Debt funding reached €4 billion. Four new unicorns emerged, including Tines and Neko Health. The UK led in equity fundraising, while Ireland and Spain showed strong growth.