AI Resident - Strategic Research

About this Residency:

At UPSIDE Foods, we're turning the promise of cultivated meat into a delicious, nutritious reality, and we're using AI to do it, from faster R&D to scaled manufacturing and commercial. As an AI Resident within the Enterprise Intelligence team, you'll join a tight-knit group of data scientists and IT & software developers who partner with our sci/tech teams and senior leaders to make meat with advanced computing. Your work will inform how we apply AI across the company as cultivated meat scales worldwide.

This Residency is a chance to own a strategic research mandate from first question to final recommendation. You'll start by framing questions with leadership and building a research plan. You'll then use AI tools to move fast across public evidence, test what you find in conversations with people who know the industry, and turn it into clear, position-taking written work for our executive team. The specific focus of the work is shared with finalists under a confidentiality agreement.

This twelve-week residency, in two six-week phases, gives you a front-row seat to how AI and biology come together in a working cultivated meat company, and by the end you'll have delivered a body of evidence-backed findings and recommendations that shape decisions at UPSIDE.

What you'll do:

• Collaborate with senior stakeholders to frame strategic questions and build a research plan you own end to end.
• Use AI tools to run fast, wide desk research across public sources, and synthesize what you find into clear, decision-ready findings.
• Speak with industry practitioners and experts to test and sharpen your findings.
• Back every claim with cited external evidence, and check claims about UPSIDE's own capabilities with our subject-matter experts.
• Write and present recommendations to executive leadership at a midpoint and a final readout.
• Work closely with Enterprise Intelligence and scientific teammates to turn findings into materials the team can use.
• 20 to 40 hrs/wk, agreed with you up front, and compatible with other commitments.

Qualifications:

• Strong ownership instincts. You're able to drive a mandate forward, deliver on time and in full, and navigate messy cross-functional objectives.
• Commercial and financial reasoning, from an MBA, consulting, or hands-on experience. You understand how technology-enabled companies create and capture value.
• Fluent with AI tools for research and analysis (e.g., Claude, Gemini, NotebookLM), and you use them to work quickly and rigorously.
• Clear writer who takes a position and supports it with evidence.
• Curious about the biotech and AI business landscape, and how companies in it are built and partner.
• Comfortable handling confidential information with discretion.
• Able to protect at least 20 hrs/wk for 12 weeks, be available during business hours in US time zones, and travel to our Bay Area facility at least twice, at our expense.
• Recommended: mammalian cell culture or bioprocess experience, prior market or competitive analysis, a network in biotech or AI.
• Preference for current or recent MBA students, strategy consultants, biopharma professionals in transition, or PhD or MA in biology and AI.

Who you'll work with:

• Our Enterprise Intelligence team, who build Applied AI at UPSIDE, have instrumented our manufacturing and R&D data, and steward our data lake.
• Bioprocess and cellular-biology scientists and engineers who bring years of hands-on experience and review claims about our capabilities.
• Senior leaders across the company who will read your work and act on it.

Length of residency: 12 weeks

Compensation: Paid hourly at $50/hour*

Location: Remote, with potential visits to our Bay Area facility for onboarding and readouts.

*Pay may vary depending on factors including job-related knowledge and skills.

UPSIDE Foods is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Our company-wide mission is to create a product for everyone, so we are deeply committed to having teams and leaders that reflect this mission.