Computational Biologist (gn) @ AgriTech Venture, Wageningen (NL)

Computational Biologist – Build the Operating System for New Crops

Aardaia is building Domestication-on-Demand, a platform that turns wild plants into crops faster than ever before. Our first species is the aardaker, a nitrogen-fixing, protein-rich tuber that could redefine plant protein and reduce Europe’s agricultural dependence.

We are collapsing the domestication timeline from millennia to years using genomics, speed breeding, and AI-assisted prediction. This is agriculture built from first principles.

The Role
You will build the computational backbone of our breeding platform: the data infrastructure that turns genomic and phenotypic data into real selection decisions. This is not a support role. You will not be maintaining someone else’s pipelines. You will be architecting the system that enables accelerated domestication.

Every decision you make around data structures, workflows, and infrastructure directly affects how fast we can move from wild germplasm to commercial cultivars. Because this is a startup working on a new species, your work will translate directly into plants in the field and breeding decisions on the ground.

What you’ll do

• Build scalable pipelines for genomic, phenotypic, and environmental data

• Design infrastructure for variant discovery, annotation, and population genomics

• Develop genotyping strategies, including probe design and ecoTILLING, for trait discovery

• Deploy AI-native tools (Copilot, LLMs, automation) to accelerate analysis and development

• Work closely with breeders and geneticists to translate computational insights into selection decisions
  

Who You Are
You are a computational scientist who thinks in pipelines and treats data engineering as a craft. You write clean, reproducible code and are comfortable working with large, complex datasets. You are excited about AI-assisted development, but pragmatic in how you use it.

You are primarily trained as a bioinformatician or computational genomicist, with a strong programming background and a working understanding of biology, rather than the other way around.

You have

• A PhD or an MSc with substantial experience in Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics, or a related data-intensive field

• Deep programming and data engineering skills (Python, R, Bash, cloud or HPC environments)

• Experience working with large-scale sequence data (NGS, WGS, population genomics)

• A strong grasp of data structures, databases, and workflow orchestration (e.g. Snakemake, Nextflow)

• Enthusiasm for AI-assisted development and strong version control practices (Git/GitHub)

Bonus

• Experience with genomic prediction, GWAS, or SNP array design

• Interest in foundation models or advanced AI methods for biology

• A background in plant or agricultural genomics (helpful, not required)

Why This Matters
We are not optimizing existing major crops. We are expanding the set of crops humanity can grow. The systems you build will underpin species that fix their own nitrogen, thrive in marginal environments, and provide new protein sources. You will work with unique datasets on unsolved problems, with the potential for real-world impact on food systems.

Our Culture
We move fast, question assumptions, and build from first principles. At the same time, we are not afraid to get our hands dirty. Everyone at Aardaia spends time in the field, taking part in planting, phenotyping, and harvest. We believe the best computational biologists understand the system end to end, from soil to sequence to selection.

This is a startup environment. While the role is primarily computational, we value people who are curious, flexible, and willing to pitch in where needed to move the mission forward.

If you want to optimize someone else’s pipeline, this is not the role. If you want to build the infrastructure for accelerated domestication and help create crops that do not yet exist, we would love to talk.