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Ankar is building AI-powered R&D and IP infrastructure for the innovation economy. The company has raised $24M+ from top-tier VCs (Atomico, Index Ventures, Norrsken, Daphni) and angels including the Founder of Hugging Face, CEO of Datadog, and leaders from DeepMind and OpenAI. They are already deployed with Fortune 500 companies like L'Oréal and global law firms like Vorys.
In this role, you will be a patent professional bridging product development, engineering, and IP protection for large-molecule life sciences. You'll work hands-on with pharmaceutical and biotech customers to design and deploy AI-powered patent solutions that understand the nuances of biologics—antibodies, proteins, peptides, nucleic acids, vaccines, cell and gene therapies—and their patent protection conventions.
Key responsibilities:
- Build life sciences-specific patent products in partnership with product and engineering teams, developing AI tools for protein/antibody sequence analysis, biologics claim generation, sequence-listing support, and prior-art searching across life sciences databases.
- Embed directly with pharmaceutical and biotech customers' in-house patent counsel and prosecution teams to design, prototype, and deploy high-value proofs of concept for large-molecule patent workflows.
- Translate complex large-molecule patent challenges into product requirements, ensuring AI systems understand sequence data, CDR and epitope definitions, functional claim language, sequence variants, experimental data, and biologics drafting conventions.
- Lead technical sessions with patent professionals to demonstrate measurable value across biologics patent portfolios.
- Identify emerging biologics patent opportunities across therapeutic antibodies, recombinant proteins, vaccines, nucleic acid technologies, cell and gene therapies, biologics formulations, and regulatory IP strategy.
The company operates with high autonomy and ownership. They combine 3 days/week in-person collaboration at their Shoreditch office with flexibility and trust. They move quickly, ship often, and adapt based on customer feedback. This is not a role for those who need highly structured environments, predefined playbooks, or long planning cycles.
Benefits include full private health & dental coverage for you and dependents, flexible pension scheme with up to 5% employer matching, team lunches twice weekly, green commute initiative (up to £3k for bikes), and visa sponsorship.
REQUIREMENTS:
- At least 2 years of experience in biologics patent prosecution, pharmaceutical or biotech IP, or other large-molecule-focused patent work, with strong understanding of the patent lifecycle from invention disclosure through prosecution, grant, and enforcement.
- Strong knowledge of molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, or related discipline, including understanding of protein and nucleic acid sequences, antibody structure and function, biologics development, and how these translate into patentable subject matter.
- Strong biologics drafting skills with experience developing claim strategies for antibodies, proteins, nucleic acids, or other biologic modalities; understanding of written-description, enablement, sequence-listing, and functional-claiming requirements.
- Builder's mindset: thrive in ambiguity, iterate quickly on prototypes, create order from complexity, move seamlessly between high-level patent strategy and detailed biologics claim construction.
- Extreme ownership: anticipate problems, take responsibility for outcomes, consistently deliver.
- Bonus: patent law firm experience representing pharma/biotech clients; in-house patent counsel experience at pharma/biotech company; expertise in emerging modalities (antibody-drug conjugates, bispecific antibodies, RNA therapeutics, cell and gene therapies); or advanced life sciences degree combined with patent training.
