Life at Earlham Institute
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Applications are invited for a Research Software Engineer (SC6) or Senior Research Software Engineer (SC5) to join Professor Ke Li's AI for Biology Group in the Research Faculty of the Earlham Institute, based in Norwich, UK.
Background:
The AI for Biology Group will be newly established at the Earlham Institute (EI), building on Professor Ke Li's established and well-funded research programme in fundamental AI, biological foundation models, AI co-scientists and automated scientific discovery. At EI, the group will develop a Generative Digital Biology (GDB) programme: experimentally grounded AI systems that learn from biological data, support hypothesis generation, guide experimental design and accelerate discovery.
Further information is available at https://colalab.ai/
The group will have access to substantial in-house H200 GPU infrastructure, further capacity through the Norwich Data Centre and routes to national-scale AI compute such as Isambard-AI. Collaboration with the Earlham Biofoundry will provide opportunities to connect computational AI systems with laboratory automation and design-build-test-learn workflows where appropriate.
The role:
We are seeking a technically strong, research-focused Research Software Engineer to design and build the AI-agent platform for the programme. You will connect AI models, scientific tools, biological datasets, experimental-design methods, compute infrastructure, laboratory automation and human decision-making into usable systems for AI-driven biological discovery.
The work will include AI Co-Scientist architecture, agent orchestration, tool registries, model and data interfaces, workflow execution, versioning and provenance, robust evaluation, permissioning, sandboxing and safe tool execution. You will develop reusable agentic workflows and an extensible demonstrator for scientific reasoning, hypothesis generation, experimental planning, result interpretation and human-AI interaction.
This highly collaborative role will work across EI with the Earlham Biofoundry, Research e-Infrastructure, BioFAIR, ELIXIR-UK and biological research teams.
Biology and laboratory-automation experience are desirable but not essential; we welcome candidates from AI systems, research software engineering, robotics, scientific computing and related fields. The post offers an opportunity to release high-quality research software, contribute to high-impact research and support future funding applications.
Appointment will be made at SC6 (Research Software Engineer) or SC5 (Senior Research Software Engineer), according to the candidate's experience and evidence against the published criteria.
Ideal candidate:
The successful candidate will have a PhD, or equivalent research or industrial experience at a comparable level, in Computer Science, AI, Robotics, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, Scientific Computing, Data Science, Computational Biology or a closely related quantitative discipline.
They will demonstrate strong hands-on software engineering ability and experience developing complex research software, AI systems, agentic workflows, scientific platforms, robotics/automation software or data-intensive infrastructure. They should be able to build robust and reproducible software using appropriate version control, testing, documentation, containers, APIs, databases, workflow tools and CI/CD, with deployment experience on HPC, GPU, cloud or distributed-computing environments.
Candidates should provide evidence of research-active technical contributions and high-quality outputs commensurate with career stage, such as open-source software, widely used research tools, benchmarks, technical reports, prototypes, patents, demonstrators or publications. Experience with one or more modern AI-system components, such as large language models, tool-using agents, retrieval-augmented generation, workflow orchestration or model APIs, is expected. Experience with robotics, laboratory automation or biological data would be advantageous. Candidates should also demonstrate a commitment to trustworthy and responsible AI systems.
For appointment at SC5, candidates will additionally be expected to demonstrate substantial practical experience building AI-agent or scientific-agent systems; end-to-end ownership and delivery of complex technical work with limited supervision; technical leadership of a substantial software or AI-systems project or workstream; clear evidence of leading major software or research outputs; and the ability to coordinate contributors, mentor junior colleagues, and contribute substantively to grant applications and long-term platform strategy.
Additional information:
Salary on appointment will be within the range £38,000 to £46,500 per annum depending on qualifications and experience for the SC6 level post, and £47,450 to £52,560 per annum for candidates who meet the SC5 level criteria. This is a full-time post for a contract of 36 months, with possible extension.
This role meets the criteria for a visa application, and we encourage all qualified candidates to apply. Please contact the Human Resources Team if you have any questions regarding your application or visa options.
As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to offer an interview to all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for this vacancy.
The closing date for applications will be 04 September 2026.
