Junior Business Development Associate

About the role

Helical is building a virtual AI lab for biology. We help pharmaceutical and biotechnology teams adapt biological foundation models to their own data and run computational experiments for target identification and biomarker discovery.

We’re hiring a Junior Business Development Associate with strong commercial intuition, scientific curiosity and the drive to build relationships across pharma and biotech. This is a hands-on BD role with a clear career path towards becoming an Account Executive. You’ll learn how to sell complex scientific software while owning the research, outreach and sales operations that make it happen, from keeping our CRM clean and building automations to preparing decks and moving conversations forward.

This is an early commercial hire at a company already deployed with global top pharma, such as Pfizer and Tanabe. You’ll work directly with our founders and head of sales and help shape how we sell our platform.

You will:

• Dig into the world’s biggest pharma and biotech companies through their publications, preprints, conference talks, patents, clinical trials, job postings and pipeline updates, and work out exactly where Helical can meet their drug discovery needs
• Build account and contact lists across pharma, biotech and academic institutions
• Write sharp, relevant, peer-to-peer outreach across email and LinkedIn and follow up with consistency
• Own the relationships you cultivate with big pharma stakeholders
• Measure how different outreach approaches perform, and use the results to improve response rates and messaging
• Coordinate across our science team and founders ahead of customer meetings: gather what we know about the account, help scientists tailor demos and case studies to the customer’s question, and make sure agreed next steps happen
• Shape the sales materials we sell with, including pitch decks, case studies, one-pagers, proposals and account briefs
• Own pipeline hygiene in HubSpot, keeping stages, owners, next steps and dates current, and build reporting on conversion, response rates and where deals stall
• Stay on top of pharma and AI for biology, including new models, partnerships, deals and hiring moves, and convert it into sharper positioning
• Help run our conference programme, from picking events to booking meetings and following up
• Build your own AI workflows and tools, and help design the processes the commercial team runs on

Requirements

• 0 to 2 years in business development, sales, consulting or research. Recent graduates with relevant internships or projects are welcome to apply

• Real curiosity about science and AI, and the ability to get to grips with a new research area fast and explain it simply. You should know what biological foundation models are and why they change the speed of discovery

• Clear, concise writing that adapts to a scientist, a business development lead or an executive

• You already follow AI and biology news because you find it fascinating, and you can say why a development matters, not just that it happened

• A strong sense of ownership: you take responsibility for outcomes, not just tasks, and you don’t wait to be told what to do next

• Energy for an early-stage environment, where you’ll shape the playbook rather than follow one

• The organisation and persistence to run many threads across accounts and time zones

• You use AI tools to work faster, and enjoy building your own workflows

• You want feedback and act on it quickly

A life sciences degree, CRM or outbound experience, or Japanese or French are a plus. You don’t need to have closed enterprise deals or hold an advanced scientific degree.

Benefits

What we offer:

• Real ownership from day one, with direct influence on how we sell and a clear path to owning accounts as you grow

• A front-row seat at one of the most important paradigm shifts in drug discovery

• A product already deployed with leading global pharma

• Close collaboration with our founders, head of sales and business development team

• Competitive salary, equity and benefits