Scientist/Senior Scientist, Cell Expression Platform Operations

Department: Lab Science

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: San Mateo, CA

Description

The Role: BigHat Biosciences is looking for an energetic and motivated individual to oversee our mammalian cell-based expression operations to further validate next generation biotherapeutics engineered on the Milliner Platform. This role is primarily operational, has some hands-on components, and is uniquely suited for someone who would like to work with cell expression from a platform usage rather than fully executional perspective.
This role reports directly to the Protein Sciences Associate Director; works closely with other functional groups; and has broad responsibilities across BigHat for pipeline development.

Key Responsibilities

• Liaison between Program Leads, BigHat-partnered CROs and internal production to coordinate protein production in support of pipeline needs; as necessary, assist users with sequence verification and construct design
• With Program Leads, establish Project-specific cell expression screening strategies, including setting parameters for batch design and cadence, synthesizing the appropriate molecule controls and protein reagents, and establishing the workflow for characterization and hand-off between Programs, Protein Sciences, and Platform groups
• Review and interpret CRO-delivered production results and make recommendations to stakeholders on implications and any follow-up actions (further purification, computational or structural analysis, molecule re-work/re-design etc)
• Validate CRO production efforts through select in-house replication of top leads and perform larger-volume scale-ups as needed
• Contribute to studies assessing the translatability of screening metrics to cell-produced molecule performance for continued improvement of ML models and screening strategies 
• With Engineering and Data Sciences, devise dashboards and visualizations to capture relevant metrics for assessing Platform capacity and needs; monitor and assess our cell expression results as an indicator of Platform success
• With Engineering, improve our internal molecule design tools by working to identify and devise solutions to usability bottlenecks

Skills Knowledge and Expertise

• PhD in a relevant discipline and 2+ years of industry experience 
• Knowledge of antibody parts and molecule construct design, including commonly used engineering mutations for production or functionality
• Hands-on experience in performing standard shake flask transfections and harvest
• Scientific background in protein expression and purification to contribute to overall team goals
• Demonstrated prior success in thinking about metrics and means to measure progress and track success over time
• Prior experience working with cross-functional groups to build software tools for workflow tracking or data visualization
• In-depth experience with antibody engineering and design a plus