I applied online. I interviewed at Absci in Oct 2025
Interview
3 Rounds. The HR, hiring manager and the experimental team is good. But during the on site interview, they allow a master of computer science and a AI researcher to judge a structural biophysics understanding of antibody development. That is pretty insane. Maybe AlphaFold gives them too many confidence that they think they do not any background training to do the drug discovery. That is why their stock price is so low. If the company can trust the product team and experimental team more. They will be way more successful
The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Absci (New York, NY) in Jul 2023
Interview
Was approached by their recruiter on Linkedin, and was scheduled for a recruiter screen couple of days after I submitted my resume.
- Was given a take home exercise that had to be submitted in 24 hours.
- A week later, I was scheduled for a technical deep dive with the hiring manager.
- A week later, was invited to a virtual onsite consisting of a technical talk and 5 1-on-1 with different team members.
- Recruiter told me all members of the team either gave hire or strong hire feedback, so was hopeful to get an offer.
- A week later, they scheduled me for a VP level person to get additional signal, and it went really well.
- 5 days later, I got a reject mail with no feedback.
On checking with the recruiter privately, they told me that the hiring manager felt that my lack of experience in generative AI was an issue and they vetoed the team's feedback. Seriously, I have worked on GNNs and transformers for bio applications extensively, and just because I have not designed molecules with generative AI, they considered it as lack of experience. Fine.
This lack of experience was clearly mentioned in my resume and also during my initial interviews. If they really wanted to hire only generative AI experience, they could simply not have shortlisted me. The AI team literally has people from non bio backgrounds!
Just because the interviews are virtual these days, it doesn't mean that they just keep scheduling interviews hoping that something works out. This shows lack of experience on the leadership's part.
Final thoughts: Inexperienced AI leadership. Frustratingly long interview process that is not worth the pain. Will never consider such teams again!