Director, AI Scientific Discovery

Overview

Reporting to the Chief Science Officer and working closely with faculty leadership, this role serves as a bridge between cutting-edge AI methods and real-world biological research applications. The Founding Director will shape institutional AI strategy, stand up sustainable platforms and services, and cultivate a culture of responsible experimentation and scientific rigor.

Who We Are The Salk Institute is an internationally renowned research institution that values all members of our scientific community. We seek bold and interactive leaders passionate about exploring new frontiers in science. Our collaborative community embraces perspectives across discipline, professional acumen, and unique life experiences, fostering innovation, and a sense of belonging. Together, we strive to improve the wellbeing of humanity through groundbreaking research. Founded by Jonas Salk, developer of the first safe and effective polio vaccine, the Institute is an independent, nonprofit research organization and architectural landmark: small by choice, intimate by nature, and fearless in the face of any challenge. Salk\'s vibrant community has many talented individuals from varied backgrounds, each playing a crucial role in driving our mission forward. From visionary leaders to dedicated administrators and brilliant faculty members, the Institute is united by a shared passion for scientific exploration and innovation.

What Your Key Responsibilities Will Be

• Develop and execute an institute-wide scientific AI strategy aligned with Salk’s research mission.
• Partner directly with faculty and labs to identify high-impact AI use cases and co-design pilot initiatives.
• Build and scale shared AI services including model access, workflow tooling, and documentation.
• Partner with Salk’s scientific core facilities to drive scientific hypotheses.
• Establish governance frameworks addressing data classification, privacy, reproducibility, and model validation.
• Create best practices for evaluation, benchmarking, and scientific reproducibility of AI-enabled research.
• Design and deliver training workshops, seminars, and office hours to build AI literacy across the Institute.
• Document and publish internal case studies demonstrating measurable research impact.
• Develop operating models, budgets, and staffing plans to ensure long-term sustainability.
• Represent Salk externally in AI research collaborations, consortia, and strategic partnerships.

What We Require

• PhD in machine learning, computational biology, computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, or a related quantitative discipline, with demonstrated research output (e.g., peer-reviewed publications, preprints, or equivalent scholarly contributions in AI/ML or computational science).
• 7-10+ years of experience applying advanced AI/ML methods in research-intensive environments, including direct contribution to scientific projects that resulted in publications, translational outcomes, open-source releases, or externally funded grants.
• Demonstrated expertise in model development, benchmarking, and evaluation, including:
• Statistical validation and cross-validation methodologies
• Reproducibility workflows (version control, containerization, experiment tracking, dataset provenance)
• Hands-on experience training and deploying models at scale, including work with:
• GPU-accelerated environments (e.g., multi-GPU, distributed training, or large-model fine-tuning)
• HPC clusters and/or cloud-based AI platforms
• Large-scale biological datasets (e.g., genomics, imaging, proteomics, single-cell, multimodal data)
• 5+ years of experience building or leading computational research initiatives, including management of interdisciplinary teams (scientists, engineers, research software developers) and oversight of technical roadmaps, budgets, or shared scientific services.
• Demonstrated success in securing or contributing to competitive research funding (e.g., NIH, NSF, foundation grants, industry collaborations) involving computational or AI-enabled components.
• Track record of translating complex computational advances into adoptable scientific tools, workflows, or platforms, evidenced by cross-lab uptake, shared infrastructure adoption, or measurable research acceleration.
• Strong working knowledge of responsible AI, data governance, and regulatory considerations relevant to biomedical research (e.g., data privacy, controlled-access datasets, reproducibility standards, ethical model deployment).
• Evidence of scientific leadership and community engagement, such as invited talks, workshop organization, consortium participation, or contributions to open-source AI/scientific ecosystems.

What We Can Offer

The expected pay range for this position is $185,000 to $235,000 per annum. Salk Institute provides pay ranges representing its good faith estimate of what the institute reasonably expects to pay for a position. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as (but not limited to) the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, departmental budget availability, internal equity, geographic location, and external market pay for comparable jobs.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first 12-24 months, the Director will have launched science focused AI services adopted across multiple labs, established clear governance and validation frameworks, delivered training programs to expand institutional capability, and demonstrated measurable impact on scientific discovery and research productivity.

Why This Role Matters

Salk is uniquely positioned to harness AI to advance fundamental biological discovery. This role will help define how artificial intelligence becomes a durable scientific capability—not just a collection of pilots, but a trusted and scalable research accelerator.

Benefits

Salk Institute offers competitive benefits, including medical, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, tuition reimbursement, patient advocacy services, and transit/parking program.

Salk Values

The Salk Community, both scientists and administrators, worked together to define values that we believe support Salk’s pursuit of excellence. To be truly the best scientific institution requires not only incredible discoveries, but a common understanding of how we should work together to enable those discoveries. The acronym “I CARE” provides a simple way to remember each of the values and reminds each of us of the importance of what we do each day.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to providing equal access to opportunities for students, employees, applicants for employment and other visitors. Salk has also adopted and maintains a policy to encourage professional and respectful workplace behavior and prevent discriminatory and harassing conduct in our workplace. Accordingly, the Institute prohibits harassment and discrimination in employment on the basis of, and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to, actual or perceived race (race is inclusive of traits associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles. Protective hairstyles include, but not limited to, such hairstyles as braids, and twists), color, religion, religious creed (including religious dress and grooming practices), national origin, ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, medical condition (including cancer and genetic characteristics), genetic information, marital status, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or related medical conditions), reproductive health decision making, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, veteran and/or military status (disabled veteran, veteran of the Vietnam era, other covered veteran status), political affiliation, and any other status protected by state or federal law.

Discrimination is prohibited with any intersectionality of the above-mentioned characteristics, including:

• Any combination of characteristics.
• A perception that the person has any of the characteristics or any combination of those characteristics.
• A perception that the person is associated with a person who has, or is perceived to have, any of those characteristics or any combination of those characteristics.

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