Microbiology Lab Technician

The Opportunity

Light Labs exists to help people know what's actually in the food and supplements they buy. Brands send us their products, we test them, and more and more of those brands share the results with their customers.

Demand is climbing, and the lab is growing with it. That means more samples on the micro bench, new methods to bring online, and real room for the people who join now to move up.

That's why we're hiring a Microbiology Lab Technician. You'd join early, doing hands-on work that goes straight to the brands counting on it. That's the role.

What You'll Own

You'll own your share of the micro bench, from the moment a sample arrives to the record behind its result.

• Make media you can trust. Prepare, sterilize, and QC culture media and reagents per SOP, including growth promotion and sterility checks.
• Keep every step aseptic. Sample prep, serial dilutions, and plating in the biosafety cabinet, plus environmental monitoring and the cleanliness, biosafety, and waste handling that go with it.
• Count what's there. Run enumeration (total aerobic plate count, yeast and mold, coliforms and E. coli), read plates on schedule, and record accurate counts.
• Run the pathogen assays. Set up tests for organisms like Salmonella and Staph aureus using compendial and rapid methods, including PCR-based platforms.
• Call an invalid run. Include positive and negative controls every time, and stop a result from going out when the controls say it shouldn't.
• Leave a trail anyone can follow. Handle intake, labeling, and chain of custody, and keep records that trace every result and COA back to its sample.
• Keep the equipment running. Operate and maintain the autoclave, incubators, biosafety cabinet, colony counter, stomacher, and pipettes, and keep media and consumables stocked so no run stalls.
• Help build new methods. Take part in developing and validating micro methods as our test menu grows.
• Build the playbook, not just the fix. When you find a better way to run a step, write it down so it holds at our next lab too.

You'll report to the head of our microbiology lab and work alongside the Ann Arbor lab team. This is a bench role, not a desk role.

What You'll Need

• Real hours on a micro bench. Media prep, serial dilutions, and plating for enumeration in a QC, food-safety, clinical, or university lab. A research or capstone lab counts if you did the work yourself, not watched it.
• Aseptic technique that holds up. Clean technique and contamination control are the core of this job. You know why each step exists, and you don't skip one when you're behind.
• Counts and controls you can defend. Dilution and colony-count math done right and checked, and the judgment to call a run invalid when the controls say so.
• Accuracy that lasts the whole shift. This work is precise and repetitive. You've held your accuracy over long stretches, caught your own mistakes early, and written your records as you went.
• A degree in microbiology, biology, food science, or a related field, or the laboratory track record that stands in for one.
• Ready to be on the lab floor in Ann Arbor, MI. This is on-site, not remote.

Stronger still: a year or more in a food, supplement, dairy, pharma QC, or environmental micro lab; hands-on pathogen detection using USP <61>/<62>, FDA BAM, or AOAC methods; running PCR-based or other rapid platforms; time in an ISO 17025-accredited lab; safe handling of BSL-2 organisms; work on an environmental monitoring program; and logging results in a LIMS, QBench especially.

Who We Are

Light Labs is building the modern platform for lab testing, starting with consumer goods brands: cheaper, faster testing that also automates regulatory compliance and drives revenue.

Consumers deserve to know what's actually in the products that affect their families' health, and transparency is what creates that informed customer. Beyond a faster, cheaper lab, we're building the infrastructure for brands to push lab data straight to their product pages (what's in it, what's not, claims verified) and automatically comply with regulations like Prop 65, CA AB 899, and Amazon's testing requirements.

That full loop, testing through customer-facing data, lets brands differentiate themselves and become the obvious choice in their category.

We're backed by top VCs, with CPG founders and strategics in the round. Everyone here, lab tech to engineer to sales, has a seat at the table in making the food system more transparent.

Our Mission

Everything we consume is getting more toxic and less nutritious, and the problem is invisible — you can't see, taste, or smell it:

• Cinnamon apple puree pouches, marketed for children and labeled preservative-free, kosher, and gluten-free, contained lead levels 200 times greater than the FDA's proposed guidelines.
• Over 1,300 chemicals are banned in cosmetics in the EU, while only 11 are banned in the United States.
• The US allows thousands of food additives that are banned in other countries.
• A study of 168 baby foods found that 95% contained at least one heavy metal (arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium), with a quarter containing all four.
• Seven out of eight samples of kale tested contained disturbing levels of PFAs, with organic kale containing even higher levels of the toxic compounds.

Testing for purity today is slow, expensive, and nearly impossible to interpret without a PhD. No feedback loop means no pressure to change, but if people knew what was actually in their food, they'd shop differently. That's our mission: real transparency, and a clean micro result is only as trustworthy as the technique on the bench behind it.

Founding Team

• Nick Mares, 2x founder (Kettle & Fire, a $100M/year brand, and Upside Financing, exited 2022), $60M raised, CEO and COO experience, Thiel Fellow.
• Vijay Manohar, helped scale Samsara to $1B ARR and IPO (NYSE: IOT). B.S. computer engineering, UT Austin.

Values We're Looking For

• First Principles. We're looking for team members who can deal with ambiguity, deconstruct problems, and build the optimal solution. Question every requirement, delete any part or process you can, simplify and optimize, accelerate cycle time, automate. On the micro bench, that means knowing why a step exists before you change it.
• Standard of Excellence. High standards are contagious. A talent attracts A talent. There's a glut of mediocrity in the world. We're chasing after the products and people that strive for excellence.
• Bias for Action. Take initiative, make decisions quickly, and have a willingness to experiment and learn from failures. Customer expectations aren't static, they rise over time, which means we have to continuously improve every single day.
• Low Ego. Coachability: it's not about being right, it's about getting to the right answer. React calmly to criticism or negative feedback, treat feedback as an opportunity for information and improvement. Respectfully challenge decisions when you disagree, even when it's uncomfortable, and once a decision is made, commit wholly and move forward.

Why This Role

Every result that leaves this lab reaches a brand within days, and more of those brands are using their results to show customers what is and isn't in their products. When a parent checks a product page before buying, the data they see started on a bench like yours.

Early hires here watch the company take shape and grow with it. If you want microbiology work that means something past the bench, and a team that's building something new, we want to hear from you. Apply today.

Light Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

Benefits:

• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Vision insurance

Application Question(s):

• Step 1: The Bench Reality (Attention to Detail & Consistency). Most of this job is precise, repetitive work — serial dilutions, plating, and PCR setup, done dozens of times a day, where one mislabeled plate, a skipped step, or a pipetting slip can ruin a result. In 150 words or less, describe a time you had to do exacting, repetitive work for an extended stretch. How did you keep your accuracy from slipping, and how did you catch your own mistakes before they became a problem?
• Step 2: The Efficiency Audit (Speed & Ownership). We are currently processing 200 samples per day, but we need to scale to 350 per day next month without adding headcount. Identify one common bottleneck in sample intake, media prep, or plating (based on your experience or research). Propose a specific, actionable change to eliminate or automate this bottleneck. Do not suggest "buying a faster machine" or "working longer hours." Focus on process, workflow, or software. (Max 200 words.)
• Step 3: The Mission Alignment (Ambition & Conviction). Light Labs is not a typical lab. We are building the infrastructure to bring transparency to the food system — so that the brands doing things right can prove it, win their market, and set a new standard for what clean products look like. This requires a team that operates with high ownership, low ego, and a standard of excellence. In 200 words or less, tell us why you want to build this specific future with us. What about our mission to give clean brands the tools to win makes you want to work harder here than anywhere else?
• Step 4: The Extra Mile (Work Ethic & Grit). Tell us about the hardest you've ever worked to get something done right — a time you stayed late, redid your own work, or pushed through something tedious because the outcome genuinely mattered to you, even when no one was watching and no one would have noticed if you'd cut the corner. In 200 words or less: what was the situation, what did you do, and what drove you to go that far?

Work Location: In person

Salary : $100