Bioprocess Engineer Project Lead

About Us:

Culture’s mission is to make bioprocess development and scale-up as fast and easy as scaling software. Towards this aim, Culture’s first offering enables biopharma, biotechnology, and synthetic biology companies to run their bioprocessing R&D in the cloud. Clients design, manage, and analyze bioprocess experiments in Culture’s Console web application. Culture’s offering enables customers to focus on designing and improving their process versus spending time and effort building out their own high-throughput process development laboratory. While customers remotely observe the process and analyze data, the experiments are executed in Culture’s cloud bioreactor facility in South San Francisco. The facility is enabled by Culture’s proprietary 250mL and 5L single-use bioreactor technology and software systems.

At Culture, we combine our passions for biomanufacturing, engineering, and operations to build new solutions that make bioprocess development and scale-up faster. We value curiosity, communication, collaboration, customer focus and a drive for results.

The Opportunity: 

In this role, you will support microbial and/or mammalian customer projects by leveraging your experience in microbial/mammalian bioprocessing, tech transfer, process development, and project management. As a member of the Operational Excellence team, you will work directly with our customers to ensure their experimental needs are met and work with our internal teams to improve workflows and support robust operations.

What you’ll do

• Lead and manage one or more customer projects as the primary technical point of contact through the customer lifecycle
• Collaborate with Customer Success Management to manage customer relationships, ensuring experiments are on schedule and customer expectations are met
• Collaborate with cross-functional groups (Bioprocess Sciences, Operations, Product, Software, Hardware) by identifying and proposing process improvements to ensure bioprocess is robust for operations
• Learn how to execute bioprocesses on our custom hardware and software (3 month on-site training, complete any remaining training required for the role)
• Translate customer experiment plans into internal experiment records
• Provide troubleshooting support to customer projects by working with the operations team
• Create and adapt bioprocess control logic script in Python
• Address customer questions, monitor and analyze customer bioprocess data, and provide communication to customer and operations team as needed
• Summarize any operational issues and/or observations post-experiment for clients
• Identify and propose process improvements to workflows, which may include writing new protocols when necessary.
• Proactively share your expertise with the team to contribute to a culture of continuous improvement and learning

About you

• You have 2-4+ years of industry experience working in microbial and/or mammalian fermentation
• You have 2+ years of experience working hands-on with bioreactors and ideally, experience troubleshooting them
• You have a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in biology, chemical engineering, or a related field
• You have experience coding in python and/or experience with scripting fermentation control logic
• You have an in-depth understanding of cell physiology
• You have experience working and communicating with external clients/partners 
• You have experience leading technical improvement projects from start to finish
• You consider yourself a strong communicator, detail-oriented, organized, and proactive.
• You enjoy helping others in the lab, sharing your knowledge, problem-solving, and you take initiative to find solutions and establish scalable workflows.
• You are empathetic, curious, and reflective; you’re able to use these skills effectively to resolve conflicts and compromise with customers.

In return, we offer a supportive environment. We value:

• Lifting each other up and enabling others to be their best
• Commitment to reliability
• Empowering ownership to drive progress
• Trying new things; big innovations start with small ideas and actions

Schedule

This is a hybrid full-time role based at our South San Francisco facility.  Full time on-site training will be required for the first 3 months to train in operations to help you be an effective technical project lead.

• Monday to Friday (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m)
• Weekend availability for customer and operations support may be required

Base Salary Range:

Culture Biosciences's compensation package includes market competitive salary, equity for all full time roles, and great benefits. Our expected salary range for this role is $102,000 - $122,000. We are hiring for multiple levels and backgrounds so final offers may vary within the range provided based on experience, expertise, and other factors.

Benefits:

• Competitive salary and equity compensation
• Medical, Dental, Vision, and Life insurance
• Medical and Dependent Care FSA (prorated based on start-date)
• 401(k) plan with company match
• 3 weeks of accrued paid time off, 10 paid company holidays and a week-long winter break
• 12 weeks of parental leave at full salary
• Annual L&D stipend for conferences, continuing education, etc.
• WFH stipend of $500 for home office improvements
• For onsite employees:
• Commuter benefits
• Access to on-site child care facility, subject to availability
• Free onsite breakfast, lunch, snacks, coffee, and gym (varies based on COVID-19 restrictions)

Culture Biosciences provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants. We seek to build a company that promotes inclusion and expands the diversity of our industry as a whole. We encourage people with identities underrepresented in biotech and technology to apply.