What are the responsibilities and job description for the Scientist (Production) position at Abstract Bio?
STORY AND MISSION
In a world where intelligence is becoming commoditised, it is the availability of physical substrates that will dictate where breakthroughs happen. We are on a mission to become the first Life Factory, and our first target is the commoditisation of DNA, the prima materia of biology.
Although we started just six months ago, we already secured funding from top-tier VCs, set up operations, and serviced our first customers. If you want to go lightning-fast, then Abstract Bio is the right place for you!
ROLE DESCRIPTION
We are turning DNA into a commodity and we need a builder who is excited by unprecedented scales. As our first manufacturing engineer, you will architect a wet-lab infrastructure that enables the synthesis and delivery of millions of synthetic sequences.
You will own the full stack end-to-end: from contributing to method development to reach the cheapest cost per base-pair on the market; leading the automation and the evolution of the manufacturing platform, to scaling up manufacturing from hundreds to tens of thousands of genes in a matter of months. Your choices will affect the company’s ability to generate revenue and serve customers promptly and with impeccable QC.
This is a company-defining role. We will give you the autonomy to do your life’s best work, real room for growth, and a front-row seat in building the team and culture you would be proud to be associated with.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
Set the technical North Star. Set up the wet-lab stack: liquid handlers, non-contact dispensers, and molecular biology instrumentation to drive the pilot of the Life Factory.
Turn digital DNA into physical DNA. Working with our computational scientist, you will turn messy orders, including customer sequences as well as metadata, into smooth flows of both physical and digital information which can be easily queried, modified and annotated.
Design and build the Life Factory. Design the first Life Factory the world has ever witnessed, complete with technical specifications, designs flexible to expansion and quality control measures. Turn the Life Factory from technical specs into reality and grow into its principal architect and operator.
WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
You are a master of molecular biology. You faced challenging cloning, DNA engineering or high-throughput sequencing problems, which you solved by stretching what is possible with DNA.
You think in systems… and you create them. Inefficiency deeply bothers you, so you seek to automate every workflow, from liquid handling to sample labelling and QC, minimising human error wherever possible.
You are unfazed by big numbers. Whether you have to manufacture 100, 1,000, or 10,000 gene fragments, you approach the job orderly and systematically and never miss a deadline.
You are insatiably curious. You learn fast and enjoy turning every problem into a biological problem.
You move fast in ambiguity. When things are not certain, you are biased towards trial-and-error and fast iterations.
You are a relentless optimist. You can think clearly under stress and stay excited about the big picture even when things are not working as you would hope.
You are an analytical communicator. Although performing data analysis is not the focus of this job, you must be able to interact with computational biologists to help them inform and troubleshoot results.
NICE-TO-HAVES
You are a sequencing wizard. You have experience in working with high-throughput long-read and short-read sequencing technologies (ONT, PacBio, Illumina).
You can multiply yourself. Abstract Bio’s ethos has speed at its core; we have a waitlist filled with demand, and we expect exponential growth once we launch. You should be a magnet for talent or have worked with similarly rigorous and talented individuals who will jump at the right opportunity, especially if you are the one sounding the horn.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The best candidate will value personal impact over everything else and is ready to embark on a mission full of hardships, long working hours, and huge rewards. Your role will evolve with time; you should be excited by that and take responsibility to step up when needed.