About kaiko

In cancer care, treatment decisions can take many days—but patients don’t have that time. One of the reasons for delays? Cancer patients' data is scattered across many places: doctor’s notes, medical imagery, genomics data. At kaiko, we are developing AI foundational models to bring this data together and integrate it into clinical workflows, enabling doctors to make faster, more effective treatments decisions.

We also collaborate closely with the leading Dutch cancer research institute (NKI) on multiple AI research projects and a joint clinical validation initiative. In 2025, we plan on expanding our partnerships to even more hospitals.

We raised significant long-term funding and have offices in Zurich and Amsterdam. Over the past year, our team has nearly doubled in size, now comprising 70+ people from 25 countries. Our multidisciplinary team brings expertise in LLM and foundational model development, data science, product management, compliance, growth, and operations.

About the role

At Kaiko, we are working towards multimodal foundation models for oncology. As a Sr. Machine Learning Engineer / Researcher specializing in multimodal spatial omics, you will be conceptualizing and driving projects to build uni- and multi-modal foundation models for transcriptomics, proteomics and/or other omics data, utilizing spatial information to join different modalities including omics, images, text captions etc., exploring ways to use one modality to improve the other, and join them. You will work within our ML Research Team and collaborate closely with clinicians, researchers from hospitals and our academic collaborators.

Responsibilities

• Conceptualize, plan and execute research projects in the field of multimodal spatial omics, and towards multimodal foundation models for oncology.

• Work together with the product team and other ML teams to bring the FM capabilities to the clinic.

• Coordinate ML research projects, guiding team members, managing academic collaborations, setting project goals, and ensuring the successful execution of research initiatives.

Why kaiko
At kaiko, we believe the best ideas come from collaboration, ownership and ambition. We’ve built a team of international experts where your work has direct impact. Here’s what we value:

• We act like owners: You’ll have the autonomy to set your own goals, make critical decisions, and see the direct impact of your work.

• We thrive on collaboration: You’ll have to approach disagreement with curiosity, build on common ground and create solutions together.

• We work with ambitious people: You’ll be surrounded by people who set high standards for themselves and others, who see obstacles as opportunities, and who are relentless in their work to create better outcomes for patients.

In addition, we offer:

• An attractive and competitive salary, a good pension plan and 25 vacation days per year.

• Great offsites and team events to strengthen the team and celebrate successes together.

• A EUR 1000 learning and development budget to help you grow.

• Autonomy to do your work the way that works best for you, whether you have a kid or prefer early mornings.

• An annual commuting subsidy.

About you

• Educational Background: Ph.D. in computer science, Engineering, biology, oncology, omics or a related field.

• ML Research: A strong background in Machine Learning Research.

• Spatial omics: Experience in working with spatial transcriptomics, proteomics etc. in a machine learning context. Publications in relevant journals and conferences is a plus (NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, ECCV, ICML, MICCAI, etc.).

• Programming Expertise: Proficient in Python with extensive experience in PyTorch.

• Large scale training: Experience in training large scale machine learning models.

• Problem-Solving: Ability to diagnose and resolve complex technical challenges related to GPU acceleration and distributed training.

• Collaboration: Excellent communication skills and ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary team.

• Adaptability: Capable of managing multiple projects simultaneously and adapting to evolving priorities in a fast-paced environment.

Additional Information

This position is full-time and requires residency in either the Netherlands or Switzerland, a valid work permit, and proximity to our offices in Amsterdam or Zürich. A Certificate of Conduct will be necessary upon finalizing the employment contract due to the handling of sensitive data.

We are excited to gather a broad range of perspectives in our team, as we believe it will help us build better products to support a broader set of people. If you’re excited about us but don’t fit every single qualification, we still encourage you to apply: we’ve had incredible team members join us who didn’t check every box!