Microbial Strain Development Associate for Biopharmaceutical Production - VIE Contract

Microbial Strain Development Associate for Biopharmaceutical Production - VIE Contract 

• Location: Germany, Frankfurt
• Target start date: 01/09/2025

iMove, the Sanofi VIE Program, is available to citizens of the European Economic Area (EU + Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland) aged between 18 and 28.  

PLEASE NOTE that since this program is primarily an international development program, candidates cannot apply to a VIE assignment in their own country of citizenship.  

PLEASE NOTE that applications that are only submitted in French cannot be considered by our non-French speaking partners at Sanofi worldwide. Therefore, only applications that are submitted in English will be considered. Please make sure to apply with your personal email address.   

About the job 
 

Are you ready to shape the future of medicine? The race is on to speed up drug discovery and development to find answers for patients and their families. Your skills could be critical in helping our teams accelerate progress. Join our Microbial Strain Development team as Microbial Strain Development Associate for Biopharmaceutical Production VIE and you’ll follow, review, and share the latest project-related innovations and technology breakthroughs in academia and industry. You will also contribute to collaborations with academic institutions and cross-company working groups focussing on recombinant protein production for biopharmaceutical application, and share results through scientific publications, seminars, and webinars.

We are an innovative global healthcare company with one purpose: to chase the miracles of science to improve people’s lives. We’re also a company where you can flourish and grow your career, with countless opportunities to explore, make connections with people, and stretch the limits of what you thought was possible. Ready to get started?

Main responsibilities:

• Work independently as a fully integrated member of a cross-functional, interdisciplinary, and international Chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) development team.
• Lead planning, design, execution of molecular biological experiments, strain engineering and process development.
• Development, evaluation, and implementation of new methods or application and optimization of existing state-of-the-art process-relevant methods and molecular biological techniques.
• Engineer and optimize microbial expression strains (E. coli, P. pastoris) for recombinant protein production.
• Data analysis and data interpretation, presentation and reporting of results to international and interdisciplinary audience.
• Follow, review, and share the latest project-related innovations and technology breakthroughs in academia and industry.
• Contribute to collaborations with academic institutions and cross-company working groups focussing on recombinant protein production for biopharmaceutical application.
• Share results through scientific publications, seminars, and webinars.

About you
 

Experience:

• Practical experience in microbiology and microbial cultivation for expression performance cultivation using systems such as microtiter plates, shake flasks and microbioreactor systems (e.g. BioLector).
• Experience with DNA sequence design, cloning software (SnapGene, Benchling etc.) and modern molecular cloning techniques (Golden Gate, Gibson assembly, etc.), as well as with microbial expression systems.
• Hands-on experience and expertise on molecular cloning, microbial strain engineering and analytical characterization of microbial strains would be a great plus.
• Experience with NGS (Illumina, ONP, PacBio) and NGS-data analysis for validation of engineered expression strains would be a plus.

Soft and Technical skills:

• Knowledge in the field of recombinant protein expression technology, synthetic biology, and strain engineering with strong focus on microbial systems, especially Escherichia coli and Pichia pastoris (Komagataella phaffii).
• Passionate about biotechnology and synthetic biology.
• Demonstrated ability/willingness to quickly learn and perform in new areas, implement new techniques and instrumentation.
• Able to drive a scientific project from idea to application, "Can Do” attitude, being able to plan and execute experiments independently, organized,