The Mission:

Today, 90.6% of therapies fail in human clinical trials. As a result, one drug costs an average of $2.3B and takes 12 years to get to market.

Animal studies are where the fate of therapies is decided. Once a drug has entered humans, very little can be changed.

But today, almost all animal studies are done by hand, with methods that date back to 1960s. This makes studies expensive, low throughput and irreproducible. Only about 30% of animal studies replicate even in the same animal species.

Olden is building Animal Research 2.0.

Our tech turns an ordinary cage into an automated data collection platform that captures 20 biomarkers of health continuously, at a scale and reproducibility no other existing method can match. This means lower cost studies and more reproducible studies, as well as less human bias.

If we succeed at bringing this to the world at large, the impact could be enormous.

Reducing clinical trial failure rate even by 2% would mean 10 more drugs approved per year - more than the output of the two world’s largest pharma companies combined.

In other words, the personal impact of your work at Olden could equal that of a full Big Pharma department.

The role:

Be the first in-house scientist at Olden. You'll run the animal studies that build and validate entirely new measurements of health, cognition, strength, vision, hearing and more, that don't exist yet, and turn them into products used by labs worldwide.

Why you'll love this:

• You build new science, not the same assay for the hundredth time. You design and validate brand-new automated measurements and watch them ship.
• Your work gets seen. You'll be an author on the papers it produces, and our science travels — our first customer paper passed 100k views.
• You grow instead of narrowing. You work across biology, hardware, and AI/computer vision, side by side with the engineers building the tech.
• A high-ownership role: early, hands-on, and with real influence over how Olden does science as it scales.
• The science you want to do, at 10x speed, without the red tape, grant cycles, or the decade-long wait to find out if it mattered.

What you'll own:

• In-house mouse studies for metric and neural-network validation; dataset design and labeling; experimental design; and occasional scientific support for customers.
• You'll shape the design of new tech, feed the engineers data and feedback, run the studies that validate our measurements against gold standards, generate the data behind our papers and possibly also write the papers.

What you will achieve:

• Test and validate new tech for automated vision, hearing, weight, temperature, cognition, and strength testing, all to be launched by January 9, 2027.

You might be a fit if (Required):

• A PhD or a BSc/MSc with at least 1 year of hands-on animal experience in neuroscience, physiology, animal behavior, or a related field.
• Rigorous thinking and a solid grasp of basic statistics
• High agency and high energy; not afraid to get down and dirty
• Energized by deadlines and challenges

Bonus (Ideal):

• Computer-vision or ML familiarity.
• Publication record.
• Built or validated digital biomarkers.

This is not for you if:

• You prefer to delegate work.
• Default to “good enough” as a standard.
• You prefer a 9-to-5 job
• Need long-term job stability
• 70-hour weeks are a dealbreaker

Compensation: $70-100k cash depending on experience and fit, plus meaningful equity.

About us:

Olden is run by a Harvard PhD genetic engineer who reversed aging in the lab; an applied AI PhD who represented their country at International Math Olympiads, and a Harvard MSc hardware engineer who built much of 10X Genomics automation layer. We are a team of high intensity & high agency people.

Our customers double down, refer others and their papers go viral (100k+ views). Large programs in governments and industry use our tech to set unified metrics across fields. Last quarter we launched a total of 16 new or updated product lines while simultaneously delivering a record increase in units shipped to customers.

Over the past 18 months, we have been sold out on average by 3-4 months into the future, despite rapidly scaling manufacturing.

How we work:

• Hypercompetent people who share the mission and have real decision autonomy.
• We run on light but functional SOPs and high standards, and we mentor hard so the system scales.
• We have three sites across multiple time zones and customers in 5 continents. Expect some odd hours.
• We move in sprints. Most weeks are normal; crunches happen and everyone is on the bench when they do.
• No busywork. If it doesn't serve the product or the customer, we don't build it.

What we value:

• Maximum impact, personal growth, agency and speed. Expect to be challenged and stretched and feel like your work matters.
• We don’t value comfort. We don’t have fancy offices. We set salaries to prevent financial distractions, not to enable luxurious personal lives.
• Apply if you are motivated by personal growth, by challenging work and by the goal of building a foundational & generational company that scales your personal positive impact more than any other entity in biotech.
• Olden Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

Pay: $70,000.00 - $100,000.00 per year

Education:

• Doctorate (Preferred)

Experience:

• PhD or a BSc/MSc: 1 year (Preferred)
• with animal neuroscience, physiology, behavior: 1 year (Preferred)

Work Location: In person