The opportunity

Substrate is building a network of fully autonomous wet labs, cloud-based data production facilities for AI biology, integrated with foundation models to become the critical infrastructure layer for AI-driven biological discovery. Our first node opens in King’s Cross, London, with several integrated workcells and two scientific verticals online by mid-2027. Our customers range from foundation model labs to global pharma.

We are hiring a financial controller to build the finance function from scratch. Substrate is a deeply unusual finance problem: significant capital expenditure on workcells and lab infrastructure, large parallel grant programmes, a venture round, and a usage-priced commercial model that translates physical lab capacity into customer cost. You will own how we account for it, how we price it, and how we explain it to investors and grant funders.

About Substrate

Substrate is spinning out of Automata, the UK lab automation company that has built the workcell platform our labs run on. Our four co-founders are Mostafa ElSayed (CEO and founder of Automata), Oli Hoy (formerly VP Customer Experience at Automata), Alexey Morgunov (AI Scientist co-founder, leading the intelligence software product), and a founding biology lead joining shortly. We are aiming to have ramped up to 32 people by the end of Q1 2027.

We are funded in parallel by a combination of venture funding and government grants. We are not a cloud lab and we are not a CRO. We are an autonomous lab platform with closed-loop integration available as one operating mode for foundation model partners.

The role

You will own the finance function end to end. Day one priorities are the obvious operational pieces of a growing company: month-end close, management accounts, payroll across a team that will reach 32 by Q1 2027, statutory accounts, the first audit, and the cap table through our SAFE round and into Series A.

Two parts of the role are not standard, and they are why this role is so crucial to Substrate’s success. The first is capital-intensive accounting. Substrate runs a CAPEX-heavy operating model: automated workcells, lab fit-out, ancillary instrumentation, and transport integration each carry their own contracting, depreciation, eligibility, and grant treatment. We have parallel ARIA and DSIT grants with different eligible-cost rules, different claim cycles, and different audit expectations. You will own how we structure those claims, how we evidence them, how we sequence spend against drawdown timing, and how we explain the resulting cash position to the board.

The second is pricing. We sell access to our platform on a usage basis, and we price on a token-based model that maps the physical inputs of a run (instrument time, materials, compute, complexity) onto a cleaner customer-facing unit of value. We have a working hypothesis. You will stress-test it, build the underlying cost model, set the incentive structure, take it to early customers, and operationalise it as the commercial pricing system. This is finance work and product work at once. It is the single highest-impact piece of finance work in the company.

You will also be the executive partner to the co-founders on anything financial: the financial model, fundraising materials, board reporting, and scenario planning. You will build the team underneath you over the first eighteen months.

What you will do in your first twelve months

FIRST 90 DAYS

• Take ownership of the books, payroll, and the close. Decide what stays in-house and what gets outsourced for the next twelve months.

• Sit down with each co-founder. Understand the financial model in detail. Build your own version of it if useful.

• Set up the grant accounting infrastructure for ARIA and DSIT. Get the first claim out cleanly.

MONTHS 4 TO 8

• Stress-test and rebuild the pricing model. Take a refined token-based pricing structure to early customers and incorporate their feedback.

• Stand up the management accounts and board pack. Make Substrate a company whose finances can be explained in five minutes.

• Run the Year 1 audit cleanly. Set up R&D tax credit claims for the first eligible period.

MONTHS 9 TO 12

• Operationalise the new pricing model in the customer interface. Connect it to real billing, real revenue recognition, and the financial model.

• Position the finance function for the Series A: clean numbers, defensible unit economics, and a cost model that grant funders, customers, and investors all understand.

Who you are

You are an experienced finance leader who has built or rebuilt a finance function in a capital-intensive, usage-priced business. The shape of the problem is what attracts you: significant CAPEX, complex revenue mechanics, and a cost model with many physical variables. You have done this before in adjacent industries, hyperscale cloud, AI compute, energy, manufacturing, lab automation, telecoms, or somewhere similar, and you can carry the lessons across without needing the company to look exactly like the last one. You want a leadership team that wants their finance partner in the room when commercial and product decisions are being made.

You write good board reports. You can build a financial model from scratch and you can defend its assumptions in a room of sceptical investors. You enjoy pricing as a problem and you have an opinion on it. You are equally comfortable in the detail (a bank reconciliation, an eligible-cost rule, a deferred revenue schedule) and in the strategy (where does the next twelve million come from, and what does it cost us to take it).

You are pragmatic about doing the work yourself for the first twelve months and excited about building the team that follows. You enjoy interviewing, hiring, mentoring, and setting standards. You will be in the office at our King’s Cross site at least three days a week, and you are comfortable with that.

MUST HAVE

• Eight or more years of progressive finance experience, with at least three in a senior finance role at a venture-backed or capital-intensive growth company.

• Direct experience of CAPEX-heavy operating models: depreciation policy, asset accounting, vendor contracting, and the cash dynamics of significant up-front spend.

• Direct experience of usage-priced commercial models: cost-to-serve modelling, pricing design, revenue recognition under usage rules, and the operational connection between billing and product.

• Track record of building or rebuilding a finance function, including the team, the cadence, and the relationship with the co-founders or executive team.

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience of UK government grant finance, particularly ARIA, UKRI, Innovate UK, or DSIT-administered programmes.

• Experience of the Series A and Series B fundraise cycle: SAFE conversion, cap table mechanics, board materials, and investor diligence.

• Background in a deep-tech, science, or hardware-adjacent domain, where the finance function had to understand the physical operating model.

• Direct experience designing or operationalising token-based, unit-based, or otherwise usage-quantified pricing.

Why this is unusual

Most finance leadership roles at venture-backed companies are either pure SaaS finance (clean ARR, clean margin, clean billing) or pure operational finance at a more mature stage. This is neither. You will be designing a finance function for a capital-intensive infrastructure business with a usage-priced commercial model, parallel grant programmes, and an in-progress venture round, while also being the person who decides how the pricing model actually works.

It is also a finance role with significant product surface area. The pricing model is one of the most important commercial decisions Substrate will make, and you will own it. Some finance leaders find that energising; some find it outside their lane. Worth knowing in advance which one you are.

Compensation and equity

We pay competitively against the London market for senior finance leaders at venture-backed companies, calibrated to seniority and to the specific scope of this role. We will discuss numbers with serious candidates after first conversations.

Equity is meaningful, with vesting on the standard four-year schedule and a one-year cliff. We can talk through the philosophy and the maths in detail when we meet.

How we work

Working pattern is hybrid with a strong in-person bias. We expect you to be at our King’s Cross site at least three days a week, and most of the founding team are in the office most days. Audits, board prep, payroll, and the kind of finance conversations that actually move things forward are easier when you are in the room.

30 days annual leave. A learning budget you can use for conferences, courses, books, and time. The founding team operates on a weekly cadence with a Monday planning meeting and a Friday close, and a quarterly offsite. We are direct with each other, we write things down, and we expect to be challenged.

The team you will join

You will report to Oli Hoy, co-founder, who leads our autonomous lab buildout and the broader operations of the company. You will work most closely with Mostafa ElSayed on commercial and fundraising matters, and with the co-founder team as a whole on the financial model and board reporting.

You are the first finance hire. Substrate is currently four co-founders growing to roughly thirty people by the end of 2026.

How to apply

Apply via Ashby with whatever you think shows your work best: a CV, a short email, a board pack you are proud of (redacted is fine), a pricing model, a piece of writing on a finance topic. We read everything that comes in.

Our process is three stages. An initial conversation with Oli to understand what you want from the role and what we want from it. Followed by a technical session covering the operating model, the pricing problem, and how you would build and lead the finance function.