Senior Scientist, Bioengineering

Role

You will work relentlessly to design and deploy lab-grown human tissues into cutting-edge applications on the forefront of therapeutics discovery and development. To design, advance, and mature new mechanisms/systems through which we create our lab-grown human tissues, we seek a bioengineer/biologist with an engineer’s drive to invent, and a scientist’s compulsion to discover.

Vivodyne’s human tissues allow us to test and predict human outcomes before ever testing in people during clinical trials. You will be an integral part of the close-knit Biotech Team — working in a talent-dense team to develop Vivodyne’s lab-grown human organ tissues, and deploy them as test subjects for groundbreaking new therapeutics.

Key Responsibilities: 

• Lead the design, development, and continuous advancement of lab-grown human organ tissues (healthy and diseased) to create next-generation pharmaceutical pipelines and fundamental research on how human physiology functions.
• Work on a talent-dense team of bioengineers, AI scientists, hardware engineers, roboticists, and pharmacologists to design, create, and deploy lab-grown human organ tissues.
• Iterate quickly and apply a strong engineering approach to rapidly develop and improve new tissues, and work relentlessly to overcome complex biological or technological challenges.
• Apply wide-ranging domain expertise to understand and explain your plans and results to talented experts in other fields; serve as a subject matter expert for interdisciplinary teams.
• Independently plan, execute and analyze new experiments with Vivodyne’s platform, and contribute to the design and expansion of a capability roadmap
• Lead outcome analysis by coordinating with Vivodyne’s data science and AI teams, and reporting/presenting experimental data to internal teams and external stakeholders with an exceptional level of polish and presence.
• Deploy engineered tissues at massive scale (1,000’s of conditions in parallel) for fundamental research on human physiology and to understand human responses to therapeutics, in health and disease.
• Document your work in high detail using Vivodyne’s online software tools and notebooks, and be responsible for inventory management, procurement, and look-ahead planning related to the projects you lead.
• Demonstrate sharp first-principles thinking, maintain meticulous attention to detail, and work collaboratively in a team-oriented environment.
• Contribute directly to the success and reliability of our products, playing a critical role in the advancement of our therapeutic discovery and development efforts.
• Serve as a key interface to our AI, data science, software engineering and robotics teams to communicate project needs.
• Utilize high-throughput confocal imaging, transcriptomics, proteomics, and other relevant techniques (deep experience with a some or all of these is a large plus)

Requirements and Expectations

You Are Relentless. At Vivodyne, we tackle exceptionally difficult problems that often end in failure. Total success is infrequent, yet deeply meaningful and satisfying. This role demands steadfast resilience, unyielding curiosity, and an obsessive commitment to revolutionizing how we create interventions to restore, improve, and extend human health. Your dedication and relentless drive are essential to accomplishing what others deem impossible. You are too stubborn to accept failure; you are encouraged and emboldened by it. You adapt quickly to changing strategies and are creative yet efficient in your problem-solving. You thrive in an environment that requires unwavering focus and the willingness to go the extra mile, while surrounded by a team of equally driven and passionate individuals also committed to achieving the extraordinary.

Science & Engineering. The role demands a blend of technical skill, meticulous attention to detail, and the ability to work collaboratively in a team-oriented environment. You have previously demonstrated exceptional ability in conceiving and executing field-leading research in molecular/cell biology, bioengineering, genetics, oncology, or closely related fields, where you have advanced (and not just applied) the state of the art. You have a deep, fundamental understanding of the principles of engineering and biology. You have substantial knowledge of several human organ systems or of developmental biology. You bring an engineering-like perspective to biology, seeking to invent and build, not only discover.

You reason deeply, seeking to understand the first principles underlying your work, and bring deep scientific reasoning to immunological questions. You understand how to dissect the workings of the immune system and manipulate it where necessary. You are comfortable working in a high-quality laboratory environment with strict sterility practices and have a good understanding of the behaviors required. Your hands-on experience in a laboratory environment, and the ability to quickly learn and adapt to new techniques and methods, accelerate your team’s ability to discover and develop lifesaving drugs using the engineered tissues that you generate.

Process Perfectionism. You are meticulous with process development, and are determined to constantly improve and optimize our mechanisms and methodologies. You have a proven track record of producing work of the highest quality, with an acute attention to detail. You know how and when to balance ideation and prototyping with ‘production-grade’ quality. You understand how to create, follow, and disseminate laboratory procedures that minimize variability and maximize consistency and efficiency. You are exceptionally data-driven in your decision-making, and always work from or to first principles. You question your conclusions constantly. You actively form hypotheses for potential sources of error and test those hypotheses to understand the sensitivities of the systems you generate. You document the results of your work in precise detail. You take exceptional pride in your diligence, with a proven ability to generate complex immunological responses in vitro that require a high degree of accuracy and consistency. You have an exceptional work ethic and dedication to working to high standards, and feel a sigh of relief when surrounded by others who deeply appreciate (and produce) polished work. You thrive in a culture whose values and behavior align to produce world-leading products and processes with impeccable consistency.

Continuous Improvement. You take pride in operational excellence and continuously seek new ways to improve our mechanisms and methodologies. You actively engage in troubleshooting and problem-solving, ensuring the reproducibility and biological performance of our engineered tissues. You interrogate and resolve the root cause of process inefficiencies, shortcomings, or failures by being meticulous about tracking and documenting irregularities and unexpected deviations. You leverage your growing expertise with a process to consider and propose improvements to make it faster and more precise. You are always on the lookout for ways to make our systems simpler and more efficient, whether through consolidating systems, overhauling existing systems, or updating documentation. You consider no detail too small to improve, and no imperfection too minor to correct. You believe deeply that continuous iteration toward perfection at a large scale is the true mark of excellence, and seek to work alongside a team that celebrates your focused efforts toward this goal.

Teamwork and communication. You thrive in a team-oriented environment, where collaboration and communication are key to achieving our collective goals. You are willing to share your expertise and learn from others, fostering a positive and productive working environment. You document your learnings in a data-driven manner and are excited to share them with others. You explain and present your thoughts clearly, understand how to summarize the key parts of your data, and enjoy working with scientifically competent management. You use your excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, to document your work clearly and concisely and share information effectively with your team. Your adaptability allows you to embrace and improve new techniques, ensuring our bioengineering R&D remains sharp at the cutting edge.

Qualifications:

• Bioengineering or biology MD/PhD or PhD from a leading institution, with evidence of “top 5%” accomplishments and a minimum of 3 years as a postdoc or equivalent industry experience.
• Extensive hands-on experience with bioengineering / tissue engineering involving human primary cells. Evidence of field-leading experience with in vitro cell or tissue engineering, with approaches that are reproducible and scalable.
• Proficiency in aseptic cell culture techniques, familiarity with biosafety protocols and guidelines, understanding of dose-response relationships and methods to analyze drug efficacy and toxicity in complex systems.
• Experience in conducting experiments, analyzing data, documenting results, and communicating outcomes to internal and external stakeholders.
• Rapid ability to adapt, design, refine, and stringently execute biological protocols and operating procedures.
• Demonstrated ability to handle multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to communicate effectively to a team and with project stakeholders in meetings, Slack, or in written formats such as process documents, design proposals, and quality reports.