Scientist II

Company Description

Guardant Health is a leading precision oncology company focused on helping conquer cancer globally through use of its proprietary blood tests, vast data sets and advanced analytics. The Guardant Health Oncology Platform leverages capabilities to drive commercial adoption, improve patient clinical outcomes and lower healthcare costs across all stages of the cancer care continuum. Guardant Health has launched liquid biopsy-based Guardant360®, Guardant360 CDx and GuardantOMNI® tests for advanced stage cancer patients. These tests fuel development of its LUNAR program, which aims to address the needs of early stage cancer patients with neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment selection, cancer survivors with surveillance, asymptomatic individuals eligible for cancer screening and individuals at a higher risk for developing cancer with early detection. 

Job Description

To enable Guardant Health to lead the disruption of cancer treatments through non-invasive cancer screening, the Technology Development Team is seeking a highly motivated development Scientist II to help test and validate novel technologies for rare variant studies with next-generation sequencing. At Guardant, we leverage the most advanced technologies and work with leaders in many different fields to create the most impactful and meaningful technologies for cancer management.

As a Scientist in the Technology Development Team, you will work with members within the team and interface with multiple teams including process engineering, clinical operations, research operations, and bioinformatics. You will be hands on in the lab and be required to design, implement, and validate new technologies related to liquid biopsy sequencing assays for the early detection, treatment, and monitoring of all cancer types.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Work in a team environment and independently to develop, test and improve sample isolation and preparation technologies for rare variant studies in circulating cell free nucleic acids with next-generation sequencing
• Think creatively and apply knowledge to design experiments and analyze data for NGS applications in oncology diagnostics
• Be highly committed and deliver results in a fast-paced start-up environment
• Transfer new technologies into production environments, write supporting documentation.
• Support troubleshooting activities within the clinical lab with support for ongoing technologies after they are transferred

Qualifications

• PhD in biochemistry, bioengineering, genomics or molecular biology field
• 1-2 years of experience in biotech industry preferably in cell-free nucleic acids and/or NGS field is a plus
• Comprehensive knowledge of nucleic acid sample isolation, preparation and NGS sequencing technologies
• Strong background in biochemistry, molecular biology, and working knowledge of genomics
• Experience in development or optimization of nucleic acid technologies with a strong preference related to sequencing-based genomic assays, especially utilizing circulating cell-free nucleic acids
• Technical knowledge of NGS library preparation, target enrichment, and rigorous product development practices
• Experience with bioinformatics analysis of NGS data
• Experience with liquid handling platforms is a plus
• Excellent interdisciplinary communication skills required
• Good organization skills, and detailed orientated
• Self-driven and strong team player with proven track record

Additional Information

Hybrid Work Model: At Guardant Health, we have defined days for in-person/onsite collaboration and work-from-home days for individual-focused time. All U.S. employees who live within 50 miles of a Guardant facility will be required to be onsite on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. We have found aligning our scheduled in-office days allows our teams to do the best work and creates the focused thinking time our innovative work requires. At Guardant, our work model has created flexibility for better work-life balance while keeping teams connected to advance our science for our patients.

Covid Vaccination Policy:  Starting January 7, 2022, Guardant Health will require all employees to be fully vaccinated to either (a) establish that they have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19; or (b) request and obtain an approved exemption from Guardant’s COVID-19 U.S. Vaccination Policy as a reasonable accommodation, as consistent with applicable laws.  An employee is considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19 two weeks after receiving the second dose of a two-dose vaccine or one dose of a single-dose vaccination. Acceptable vaccines are approved or under emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Adm