Research Associate, MOAD Returnship

Your work will change lives. Including your own. 

We are building a future where biology is solvable.
The path to new medicines is currently slow and expensive, with high failure rates, leaving millions of patients waiting for new treatment options. Our story is one of innovation: applying AI, vast datasets, and industrial scale to decode biology and accelerate the development of life-changing treatments.

Recursion’s Returnship Program
Recursion’s Returnship program, sponsored by the Women at Recursion Employee Resource Group, helps professionals who have taken a break of two or more years from the STEM industry return to the workforce. Participants work in a supportive, learning-focused environment with guidance from their teams and mentors.

Our program benefits both sides. You’ll own projects that directly advance our mission to radically decode biology and serve patients, and you’ll build experience with new, cutting-edge tools and technology. In turn, Recursion gains access to an underutilized pool of talent in Utah and benefits from the skills and experience you’ve built through your work and life.

What you’ll get

• A dedicated mentor who meets with you weekly

• Weekly seminars on workplace culture, communication, and technology

• Support from your team as you re-enter the workforce

Our program runs for sixteen weeks, from March 2027 through the end of June 2027. Depending on performance and business needs, it may lead to full-time employment. This position is primarily based at our Salt Lake City, UT headquarters, with some hybrid flexibility.

Research Associate Returnship
The Multi-Omics Assay Development (MOAD) team is excited to welcome a Research Associate with a passion for laboratory-based assay development, critical thinking, and collaboration as part of the Recursion Returnship program. The MOAD team develops biologically relevant cellular based assays for screening on Recursion’s state of the art high throughput screening (HTS) platform to decode biology and improve patient lives. 

As a Research Associate on the MOAD team, you will work under the direction of a Senior Scientist and collaborate with cross-functional teams across a variety of areas including MOAD, biology, engineering, data science, HTS, and tissue culture to develop, scale, optimize, and execute biological assays. The MOAD team is seeking an individual with a growth mindset who is a proactive communicator and takes initiative while collaborating with cross-functional teams. Flexibility, attention to detail, and strong time management skills are essential to succeed in this role.

Working as a member of the MOAD team, you will: 

• Design and execute cellular based assays: This includes experiment design, project planning, preparing reagents, thawing and culturing cells, performing lipofection, compound addition, and media changes.

• Develop, optimize, and scale assays: This includes identifying the optimal assay conditions, troubleshooting experiments, and working with cross functional teams to drive projects forward.

• Utilize automation to perform experiments: This includes working with acoustic liquid handlers, microplate liquid handlers, and robotics systems.

• Document activities: This includes maintaining detailed and accurate electronic laboratory notebooks (ELN), standard operating procedures (SOPs), and project records.

• Analyze and present data: This includes analyzing a variety of datasets and presenting to peers to drive projects forward in a data driven manner.

The Recursion Community

Cutting-edge tools matter, but our people are what set us apart. Our structure and culture are built to help you do your best work, not to feed politics or ego. We live by values that give us a real competitive advantage. They help us work better and faster without relying on burnout, and they encourage us to make leaps where others take steps. People in every role and at every level make the bold bets that move us forward.

The Returnship gives you a front-row seat to this culture. From your first week, you’ll work alongside teams who value collaboration over ego, with a mentor in your corner and real ownership of projects that matter. You won’t be on the sidelines while you ramp up.

The Experience You’ll Need

• 3+ years of work experience in a research laboratory, preferably with mammalian cell culture and aseptic technique experience.

• Bachelor’s Degree or higher in Biology, Biochemistry, Bioengineering, or a related field and understanding of molecular biology techniques. 

• 2+ years break from employment

• Thrive in a team environment while being able to work independently

• Have strong and proactive communication skills

The Values We Hope You Share:

• We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust. 

• We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.

• We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.

• We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.

• We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy—leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together. 

• We are One Recursion. True cross-functional collaboration is about trust, clarity, humility, and impact. Through sharing, we can be greater than the sum of our individual capabilities.

Our values underpin the employee experience at Recursion. They are the character and personality of the company demonstrated through how we communicate, support one another, spend our time, make decisions, and celebrate collectively.

More About Recursion

Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) is a clinical-stage TechBio company decoding biology to radically improve lives. Recursion is advancing a portfolio of differentiated investigational medicines across its wholly owned and partnered pipeline in oncology, rare disease, neuroscience, immunology, and other therapeutic areas with significant unmet need. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, an AI-native, end-to-end drug discovery and development platform integrating biology, chemistry, and clinical development into a unified intelligence system. Powered by proprietary multimodal data, purpose-built AI models, and bilingual teams fluent in both science and AI, the Recursion OS is designed to translate complex science into medicines that matter — faster, better, and at scale — for patients who are waiting.

Recursion’s platform infrastructure is anchored in Salt Lake City, Utah and Milton Park, Oxfordshire, where its automated biology and chemistry laboratories generate proprietary data at industrial scale. Recursion also maintains offices in New York, Montréal, and London, three global hubs for talent and leadership at the intersection of AI and scientific innovation. Learn more at www.recursion.com, or connect on X and LinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation. 

Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Recursion leverages AI in our hiring process. We use Greenhouse's Talent Matching AI technology feature to help review applications against the skills and experience we've identified as important for this role. It analyzes your resume and application responses to assess how closely your qualifications match our criteria - but all decisions are made by our human recruiters and hiring managers, including whether to move to the next phase of review. Talent Matching does not automatically advance or reject any candidate. By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have been informed about and consent to this use of the Talent Matching tool in our review process. Please refer to our Recursion Privacy Policy at https://www.recursion.com/privacy-notice/ for more information about our processing of personal data and your rights. 

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Recursion Pharmaceuticals and its affiliate companies do not accept resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Recursion or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Recursion’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Recursion, and Recursion will not owe any referral or other fees. Our team will communicate directly with candidates who are not represented by an agent or intermediary unless otherwise agreed to prior to interviewing for the job.

Department: HTS