Research Associate, Neuroscience 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.

Neuroscience Returnship
The Neuroscience (Neuro) team is a diverse, collaborative group working on complex human cell models for drug discovery. This team works on iPSC differentiation techniques, process development for scaled cell production, assay development for cell characterization, and gene editing techniques to deliver data packages that drive decisions about cellular models and compound selection. With a mission of bringing transformative medicines to patients, this high-performing team works together to continually improve our workflows.

The Neuro Returner will work alongside, and in support of, R&D scientists. This role will be trained and mentored by a scientist and will interact with other team members outside of Neuro daily, as needed, during the returnship period.

You will own a laboratory project focused on developing and validating cell-based assays, performing hands-on cell culture work, and maintaining data and documentation in the team’s systems. 

• Perform tissue culture activities such as cell thawing, passing, and banking of cell models, including iPSCs and/or iPSC-derived cell types
• Develop, optimize, and validate cell-based assays using automated imaging and analysis pipelines
• Establish and optimize experimental conditions for cell models
• Document project activities using an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) and interact with a laboratory information system (LIMS) for reagent tracking, SOPs, and QC
• Write assay SOPs and support inventory and QC tracking workflows
• Deliver data with assays such as immunofluorescence, qPCR, ELISA, etc.

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 a Bachelor’s Degree or higher in Neuroscience, Biology, Biochemistry, Bioengineering, or related major.
• 2+ years break from employment
• Strong desire to learn with excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Strong attention to detail and the ability to accurately record experimental details and results
• Enjoy working both independently and collaboratively with a team in a laboratory setting
• Thrive in fast-paced environments where you’ll leverage creativity and independent thinking

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 , or connect on and .

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  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.