Scientist - Assay Development

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about 5 years old

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Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.

Core to our organism engineering pipeline is the testing and analysis of our engineered strains. We leverage high-throughput screens and selections to measure thousands of strains at a time for improved enzyme activity of key steps or increased titers of final products. Given the diversity of projects at Ginkgo, it is essential that your assay development approaches work across multiple hosts and products of interest. If successful, your novel screening and selection methods will lie at the center of our new high-throughput screening pipelines.

Ideally, you have experience in the development & optimization of novel enzymatic biochemical and cell-based assay. Specifically, you will design and execute laboratory experiments, generate & interpret data supporting the development of new assays, and execute high-throughput screens. Other responsibilities will encompass an ability to learn, apply, and incorporate automation solutions to assay development operations in the lab, assay troubleshooting, data analysis, and reporting.

Responsibilities

  • Develop, optimize and execute novel enzymatic and cell-based assays in high-throughput screens. 
  • Design and execute lab-based experiments, generate and interpret data supporting the successful development of new assays and tests.
  • Learn, apply, and incorporate automation solutions during assay development, execution, troubleshooting, data analysis, and reporting.
  • Investigate and identify new methods/technologies to generate reliable and reproducible data.
  • Plan and execute experiments, adapt readily to changing project needs and develop sophisticated problem-identification and problem-solving skills.

    • Desired Experience and Capabilities

  • MS in biology, biochemistry, bioengineering, pharmacology, enzymology, or equivalent with 2+ years of prior experience in an industry laboratory setting working as part of a multi-disciplinary team; OR BS with equivalent; OR PhD with equivalent.
  • Ability to create and establish priorities, manage work plans, and meet timelines.
  • Demonstrated initiative, teamwork, collaboration and passion for developing technical expertise across assay development to routine execution
  • Established capability to design, conduct, optimize and execute on novel biochemical and cell-based assay development efforts in the lab supporting HTS and project deliverables.
  • Strong scientific foundation in the understanding and implementation of a wide range of biochemical and cell-based assay readouts (e.g. TR-FRET, HTRF, BRET, PCA, Alpha Screen, Fluorescence Polarization, Luminescence & Fluorescence-based reporter &/or label-free assays).
  • Broad experience and expertise in molecular reagent & cell line handling as well as development and implementation of novel cell target engagement, functional, and phenotypic assays.
  • Experience in developing biochemical assays (e.g. assessing enzymatic activity & kinetics, molecular interactions, protein modifications) &/or biophysical techniques & approaches (e.g. SPR, ITC, TSA, etc.)
  • Experience with microbial fermentation at the plate or bench scale.
  • Familiarity with setting-up and operation of microplate readers (e.g., Synergy or PHERAstar), flow cytometer or optofluidic based systems (e.g., ZE5, Beacon) and automated liquid handlers (e.g., Prime, Hamilton, Echo, Tempest) in the development of 384- and/or 1536-well microtiter plate assays.
  • Experience in computational analysis of biological data and large data sets using general-purpose programming language (such as Python, R, or Matlab)
  • Familiarity with software and statistical platforms for the analysis of large data sets (e.g., JMP, Tableau, Spotfire, or MODDE pro/DoE)


    • To learn more about Ginkgo, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com/press/ or check out some curated press below:

    We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.  

    We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.

    It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.