How to Apply to Exscientia

9 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 3 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Exscientia is no longer an independent company; it operates inside Recursion Pharmaceuticals after the November 2024 all-stock merger.
  • The Greenhouse board at boards.greenhouse.io/exscientia is still active, but check recursion.com/careers as well, because role posting is consolidating.
  • Sites span Oxford UK headquarters, Vienna Austria robotics, Cambridge MA biology and clinical, plus Salt Lake City Recursion HQ; confirm location and entity for any role.
  • PhD-level technical depth is the baseline for scientific roles; ML, chemistry, biology, and engineering hires all face deep methodology probes.
  • Founder and former CEO Andrew Hopkins exited in October 2023 following a board investigation; this is part of the company's recent history candidates should know.
  • The competitive landscape is intensifying, with Isomorphic Labs (Alphabet), Schrodinger, Insitro, Genesis Therapeutics, and Iambic all vying for talent and partnerships.
  • Expect 2025 to 2026 to be dominated by integration work, platform consolidation, and likely some restructuring; this is a post-merger employer story.
  • The combined Recursion plus Exscientia platform pitches itself as end-to-end AI drug discovery at scale, but no AI-discovered drug has yet reached approval anywhere in the industry.

About Exscientia

Exscientia is a UK-founded AI drug discovery company that, since November 2024, operates as part of Recursion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXRX). This is the single most important fact for any candidate to internalize before applying: the standalone Exscientia plc that listed on NASDAQ in October 2021 no longer exists as an independent public company. Recursion announced an all-stock acquisition in August 2024 valued at roughly $688 million and closed the transaction in November 2024, delisting Exscientia and absorbing its teams, pipeline, and infrastructure into a combined entity headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Exscientia name persists for certain legacy products, partnerships, and the Oxford and Vienna sites, but the corporate parent, executive structure, capital allocation, and strategic roadmap are Recursion's. Founded in 2012 by Andrew Hopkins, a computational chemistry pioneer who held professorships at Dundee and Oxford, Exscientia built its reputation on structure-based drug design, automated synthesis, and a precision-medicine platform that paired AI-driven molecule design with patient-derived tissue models. The company grew to roughly 400 employees across Oxford Science Park (UK headquarters), Vienna (a robotics and automation lab acquired in 2018), Cambridge Massachusetts (US biology and clinical operations), Tokyo, and Miami. Hopkins stepped down as CEO in October 2023 following a board investigation into a personal relationship with a female employee, an honest fact candidates should be aware of when reading older press coverage. David Hallett served as CEO through the merger close. Major pre-merger partnerships included a roughly $5.2 billion 2022 deal with Sanofi, a $300 million plus alliance with Bayer, and collaborations with Roche, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech, GSK, and Eli Lilly. Post-merger, the combined company markets itself as the largest AI-native drug discovery platform, pairing Recursion's image-based cellular phenotyping and high-throughput biology with Exscientia's structure-based design and automated chemistry. NVIDIA is both a strategic investor and infrastructure partner. The clinical pipeline includes REC-994 (cerebral cavernous malformation, Phase 2), REC-2282 (NF2-mutated meningioma, Phase 2/3), REC-4881 (familial adenomatous polyposis, Phase 2), and Exscientia-originated assets that continue under the combined banner. Candidates should expect 2025 and 2026 to be defined by integration, restructuring, and platform consolidation rather than business-as-usual at the legacy Oxford operation. The honest read for prospective employees is that this is a post-merger employer story rather than a standalone Exscientia story, and the cultural, technical, and strategic decisions that matter most for your day-to-day work are increasingly being made in Salt Lake City and across distributed leadership rather than at Oxford Science Park alone.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Apply through the Greenhouse-hosted Exscientia board at boards

    Apply through the Greenhouse-hosted Exscientia board at boards.greenhouse.io/exscientia, or check recursion.com/careers, since open roles are increasingly being routed to the combined Recursion portal during integration.

  2. 2
    Confirm the legal entity, work location, and reporting line in the job descripti

    Confirm the legal entity, work location, and reporting line in the job description before applying, because some legacy Exscientia roles report into Salt Lake City and others remain under UK or Austrian employment contracts.

  3. 3
    Submit a CV (UK and EU convention, not US one-page resume) plus a tailored cover

    Submit a CV (UK and EU convention, not US one-page resume) plus a tailored cover letter that names the specific platform, therapeutic area, or program you want to contribute to.

  4. 4
    Expect a recruiter screen of 30 to 45 minutes covering motivation, salary expect

    Expect a recruiter screen of 30 to 45 minutes covering motivation, salary expectations, visa or right-to-work status, and willingness to work across the Oxford, Vienna, Cambridge MA, and Salt Lake City time zones.

  5. 5
    Technical roles typically include a hiring manager interview followed by a take-

    Technical roles typically include a hiring manager interview followed by a take-home exercise (a coding challenge for ML or software, a synthesis route or retrosynthesis exercise for chemistry, an analysis task for computational biology).

  6. 6
    Onsite or virtual loops usually run four to six interviews covering deep technic

    Onsite or virtual loops usually run four to six interviews covering deep technical depth, cross-functional collaboration, scientific communication, and culture fit with both legacy Exscientia leadership and Recursion counterparts.

  7. 7
    PhD-level scientific roles will include a 45 to 60 minute research presentation

    PhD-level scientific roles will include a 45 to 60 minute research presentation to a panel of senior scientists; bring a clear narrative, quantified contributions, and be ready to defend methodology in detail.

  8. 8
    References are typically requested late in the process; line up two academic or

    References are typically requested late in the process; line up two academic or industry references who can speak to recent technical work, not just character.

  9. 9
    Offers from UK and Austrian entities take longer than US offers due to right-to-

    Offers from UK and Austrian entities take longer than US offers due to right-to-work checks, and post-merger HR is still standardizing across jurisdictions, so expect occasional delays.

  10. 10
    Background checks include education verification (especially PhD), prior employm

    Background checks include education verification (especially PhD), prior employment, and for clinical or regulatory roles, additional GxP and conflict-of-interest disclosures.

Resume Tips for Exscientia

recommended

Lead with the specific subdiscipline (medicinal chemistry, computational chemist

Lead with the specific subdiscipline (medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry, ML for biology, structural biology, automation engineering) and quantify scientific output.

recommended

For PhD candidates, list publications with journal, year, and your specific cont

For PhD candidates, list publications with journal, year, and your specific contribution; first-author papers in respected venues materially help.

recommended

Name the methods, tools, and frameworks you have actually used in production: RD

Name the methods, tools, and frameworks you have actually used in production: RDKit, OpenEye, Schrodinger Suite, AlphaFold, PyTorch, JAX, Rosetta, Gaussian, GROMACS, Dask, Ray, Snakemake.

recommended

If you have wet-lab and dry-lab experience, make the integration explicit; the c

If you have wet-lab and dry-lab experience, make the integration explicit; the combined Recursion plus Exscientia platform values closed-loop design-make-test-analyze contributors.

recommended

Highlight automation, robotics, or high-throughput experience for Vienna-aligned

Highlight automation, robotics, or high-throughput experience for Vienna-aligned roles; the Vienna site was acquired specifically for its automated chemistry capabilities.

recommended

Clinical, regulatory, and translational candidates should call out specific INDs

Clinical, regulatory, and translational candidates should call out specific INDs, IB sections, FDA or EMA interactions, and trial phases worked.

recommended

Engineering and ML candidates should show production deployment, not just notebo

Engineering and ML candidates should show production deployment, not just notebooks: model serving, MLOps, data pipelines, scale (number of compounds, screens, or images processed).

recommended

Spell out partnership work if relevant: contributing to a Sanofi, Bayer, Roche,

Spell out partnership work if relevant: contributing to a Sanofi, Bayer, Roche, or BMS collaboration is a credibility signal at this company.

recommended

Keep the document UK-CV style for UK and Austrian roles (two pages acceptable, e

Keep the document UK-CV style for UK and Austrian roles (two pages acceptable, education prominent), one-page US resume style for Cambridge MA and Salt Lake City roles.

recommended

Avoid generic AI buzzwords; Exscientia and Recursion both have deeply technical

Avoid generic AI buzzwords; Exscientia and Recursion both have deeply technical hiring panels who will downgrade vague claims like 'used AI to accelerate drug discovery.'

ATS System: Greenhouse

Exscientia's careers board has historically been hosted on Greenhouse at boards.greenhouse.io/exscientia, a widely used parser-friendly ATS. As Recursion integrates the combined company, some roles are being posted on Recursion's own careers portal at recursion.com/careers, which may continue on Greenhouse or migrate to a different system. Always check both locations when searching for openings, and treat both as parser-friendly modern ATS environments.

  • Submit a single-column PDF or DOCX with standard section headings (Experience, Education, Publications, Skills) so Greenhouse's parser captures fields correctly.
  • Do not rely on tables, text boxes, or graphics for critical content; parsers strip them and you lose searchable terms.
  • Mirror the exact terminology from the job posting in your CV (for example 'structure-based drug design' rather than only 'molecular modeling') so keyword filters surface your application.
  • Fill out every Greenhouse application field, including the optional ones; recruiters filter on these, and an incomplete application reads as low-effort.
  • For PhD roles, include a publications list inline in the CV rather than only linking to Google Scholar, so the parser can index titles and venues.
  • If applying to multiple roles, tailor each submission; Greenhouse stores all your applications in one candidate record visible to recruiters.

Interview Culture

Interviews at Exscientia (and increasingly at the combined Recursion entity) are scientifically rigorous, collegial, and unforgiving of vague answers.

Expect panels of PhD-trained scientists, computational chemists, ML researchers, and platform engineers who will probe methodology in detail. The culture historically blended UK and European academic norms (deep technical conversations, comfort with uncertainty, less performative confidence) with US biotech expectations (commercial awareness, shipping orientation). Post-merger you should also expect Recursion's Salt Lake City influence: a stronger emphasis on platform thinking, scale, and cross-functional integration between biology, chemistry, ML, and engineering. Be ready to discuss not only what you did but why you chose a particular approach, what alternatives you considered, and how you would do it differently. Whiteboarding is common for ML, computational, and engineering roles. For chemistry roles, expect discussion of reaction mechanisms, retrosynthesis, and SAR analysis on real or anonymized internal series. Soft-skill questions focus on collaboration across disciplines and across sites and time zones, since the combined company spans Oxford, Vienna, Cambridge MA, Salt Lake City, Tokyo, and Miami. Disagreement is welcomed if it is well-reasoned; capitulating quickly to pushback can read as a lack of conviction. Candidates who succeed tend to communicate scientific work clearly to non-specialists, show genuine intellectual humility about platform limitations, and demonstrate comfort with the messy reality that AI drug discovery has not yet produced a marketed drug. Be candid about what your prior work did and did not achieve; over-claiming is the fastest way to lose a panel.

What Exscientia Looks For

  • Deep technical depth in a specific subdiscipline rather than broad surface familiarity across many.
  • Demonstrated ability to ship scientific or engineering work that others build on, not just isolated proof-of-concept projects.
  • Comfort working at the intersection of wet-lab biology, chemistry, ML, and software engineering.
  • Intellectual honesty about what AI methods can and cannot currently do in drug discovery; over-promising is a red flag.
  • Track record of cross-functional collaboration, ideally across geographies and time zones.
  • PhD or equivalent depth for scientific roles; senior engineering roles weight industry experience more heavily.
  • Clear scientific communication for both expert and non-expert audiences, including written documentation.
  • Resilience and adaptability, particularly important during the ongoing post-merger integration with Recursion.
  • Genuine interest in the therapeutic problem, not just the technology; interviewers ask why a particular disease area or modality matters to you.
  • Comfort with the reality that biotech timelines are long, attrition is high, and most programs fail; candidates expecting fast wins will struggle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Exscientia still an independent company in 2026?
No. Recursion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXRX) acquired Exscientia in an all-stock deal announced in August 2024 and closed in November 2024. Exscientia was delisted from NASDAQ and now operates as part of Recursion. The Exscientia brand persists for some products, teams, and the Oxford and Vienna sites, but the corporate parent and executive structure are Recursion's.
Where should I actually apply, the Exscientia Greenhouse board or the Recursion site?
Check both. The Exscientia Greenhouse board at boards.greenhouse.io/exscientia is still live for many legacy roles, but Recursion is consolidating posting on recursion.com/careers as integration progresses. If you see the same role on both, apply once through the channel that matches the legal entity and location specified in the job description.
Do I need a PhD to work at Exscientia?
Not for every role. Engineering, software, MLOps, infrastructure, operations, finance, legal, and many product roles do not require a PhD. However, scientific roles in medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry, ML for biology, structural biology, drug metabolism, and clinical pharmacology typically expect PhD-level depth or equivalent industry experience.
What ATS does Exscientia use, and how should I optimize my CV?
Exscientia uses Greenhouse, a parser-friendly modern ATS. Submit a single-column PDF or DOCX with standard section headings, avoid tables and text boxes, mirror the job description's exact terminology, and fill out all Greenhouse application fields including optional ones. The Recursion portal may use Greenhouse or may transition to another system, so check the apply flow directly.
What happened with founder Andrew Hopkins?
Andrew Hopkins stepped down as CEO in October 2023 following a board investigation into a personal relationship with a female employee, which the board concluded was inappropriate. This was widely reported and is a fair topic for a candidate to be aware of, though it is not typically discussed in interviews. David Hallett took over as CEO and led the company through the Recursion merger.
What is the day-to-day language, and which sites should I expect to interact with?
English is the working language across all sites. The combined company operates in Oxford UK (legacy Exscientia HQ), Vienna Austria (robotics and automation, originally a 2018 acquisition), Cambridge MA (biology and clinical), Tokyo, Miami, and Salt Lake City UT (Recursion HQ). Expect cross-site collaboration and meetings that span time zones.
How does the post-merger pipeline look?
The combined clinical pipeline includes REC-994 (cerebral cavernous malformation, Phase 2), REC-2282 (NF2-mutated meningioma, Phase 2/3), REC-4881 (familial adenomatous polyposis, Phase 2), and ongoing partnered programs with Bayer, Roche, Sanofi, Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK, and Eli Lilly. Exscientia-originated assets continue under the combined banner. As of 2026, no AI-discovered drug has reached regulatory approval anywhere in the industry, so expect candor about the long road ahead.
Who are the main competitors for talent and partnerships?
The most-watched competitor is Isomorphic Labs, the Alphabet subsidiary spun out of DeepMind, which has Google-scale resources and major deals with Novartis and Eli Lilly. Public competitors include Schrodinger (NASDAQ: SDGR) and BenevolentAI (LSE: BAI, struggling). Private competitors include Insitro, Genesis Therapeutics, Iambic Therapeutics, Atomwise, Absci (NASDAQ: ABSI), and ProteinQure. Valence Discovery was absorbed by Recursion, and 1910 Genetics was acquired by Roivant in 2024.
What is the culture like, and is it different post-merger?
Pre-merger Exscientia had a UK and European academic flavor: deeply technical, collegial, comfortable with uncertainty, less performative than typical US biotech. Recursion brings a Salt Lake City platform-and-scale orientation. Integration is ongoing through 2025 and 2026, so expect a culture in transition. Candidates who thrive tend to be comfortable with ambiguity and willing to bridge geographies and disciplines.
Is this a good time to join, given the merger and integration?
Honest answer: it depends on your risk tolerance. Post-merger integrations create both opportunity (broader platform, more resources, larger pipeline) and risk (restructuring, role changes, cultural friction). If you are joining for a specific scientific or technical contribution and you can tolerate organizational change, the combined company is one of the largest AI-native drug discovery operations in the world. If you want stability and a defined long-term role, wait for integration to settle further.
What about visa sponsorship and right-to-work?
UK roles typically require right-to-work in the UK or Skilled Worker visa sponsorship, which Exscientia has historically offered for senior and specialist roles. Austrian roles in Vienna require Austrian or EU work authorization or a Red-White-Red Card. US roles in Cambridge MA, Salt Lake City, and Miami may sponsor H-1B, O-1, or TN visas case by case. Confirm sponsorship availability with the recruiter early in the process.
How are compensation and equity structured post-merger?
Equity is now in Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) shares, not the legacy Exscientia ticker, which was delisted. UK and EU base salaries follow local market norms, which are typically lower than US biotech but offset by stronger benefits and statutory leave. US roles are benchmarked to Boston and Salt Lake City biotech markets. Expect standard biotech equity grants with multi-year vesting; specifics vary by level and location.

Open Positions

Exscientia currently has 3 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 3 open positions at Exscientia

Related Resources

Related Articles

Sources

  1. Recursion and Exscientia announce combination to create global leader in AI-enabled drug discovery —
  2. Recursion completes acquisition of Exscientia —
  3. Exscientia CEO Andrew Hopkins steps down after board investigation —
  4. Exscientia careers (Greenhouse) —
  5. Recursion Pharmaceuticals careers —
  6. Sanofi and Exscientia announce collaboration to develop AI-driven pipeline of precision-engineered medicines —
  7. Bayer and Exscientia enter strategic collaboration in cardiovascular and oncology drug discovery —
  8. Exscientia acquires Allcyte to advance precision medicine platform —
  9. Isomorphic Labs partnerships with Novartis and Eli Lilly —
  10. NVIDIA invests $50 million in Recursion to accelerate AI foundation models for drug discovery —
  11. Recursion Pharmaceuticals investor relations —
  12. Exscientia annual report 2023 (final standalone filing) —