AI-bio - Member of Scientific Staff, Protein Production

London1w ago

In Office Staff EMEA Banking Genomics Staff Scientist Reporting Assembly Liquid

Requirements

• You are a hands-on protein scientist who likes the bench and cares about doing the same thing well many times over. You have expressed and purified proteins yourself, you know what a failed prep looks like and why it failed, and you are comfortable working in plates rather than one tube at a time. • You keep records someone else could follow without asking you. You say early when something is not working, and you are happy with a plan that changes as we learn. • We do not hire people into boxes. The team is small, and early hires end up owning work beyond the job they joined for. Nobody arrives with every part of this role. If you are strong in most of it and quick to learn the rest, we want to hear from you. • ◆ A PhD in biochemistry, protein science, molecular biology or a related field (recent graduates welcome), or a BSc or MSc with two to three years of hands-on lab experience. Industry experience in a high-throughput setting is preferred. • ◆ Molecular biology for expression: PCR, cloning by Golden Gate or Gibson assembly, and checking constructs by gel, fragment analysis or sequencing. • ◆ Recombinant protein expression and purification you have run yourself, in at least one of cell-free, E. coli or mammalian systems, with affinity capture such as His, Strep or Protein A. • ◆ Protein QC: quantification, SDS-PAGE or CE-SDS, and reading the results critically. • ◆ Working in 96-well or 384-well plate formats, with careful, traceable record-keeping. • ◆ Mammalian cell culture with good aseptic technique: adherent and suspension lines, • thawing, passaging and banking, and transient transfection of HEK293 or CHO cells for expression. • ◆ Protein characterisation: binding kinetics by SPR or BLI, or biophysical assays such as nanoDSF, DLS or analytical SEC. • ◆ Cell-based assays such as reporter bioassays for binding or blockade, receptor internalisation or cytotoxicity, with imaging or flow cytometry readouts. • ◆ Liquid handlers, magnetic-bead purification systems or other lab automation. • ◆ Experience with antibodies, nanobodies or other binder formats.

Responsibilities

• You will join the protein science team and report to a senior member of its scientific staff. Day to day you will work with the scientists running DNA supply, molecular characterisation and the cell-based assays downstream of you, with the functional genomics team who share the cell culture suite, and with the engineers building the software and automation the lab runs on. • We are a small, elite team, and the people in it make the calls in their own areas. • Our process has four stages. A short screening call about the role and the practicalities. A behavioural interview about how you work, run from the same template for every candidate, before anything technical. A technical stage with the protein science team, built on real work from our lab rather than a puzzle, in person at the lab. Then references, aimed at whatever we still want to understand. • If you are not sure whether you match every line above, apply anyway. We would rather read it and decide.

Benefits

• Most protein production roles make a handful of proteins well for one project. This one makes many, in plates, for a lab built around the quality of its data, and that changes the job in two ways. • The record is part of the product. Every construct, lot, condition and QC result is captured as structured data, including the proteins that did not express, because a result is only as trustworthy as the material behind it. And the protocols you write become the starting point for automated workflows, so they have to be precise enough for a liquid handler to follow. • That means more documentation and more standardisation than most research labs ask for. • Some people find that energising; some find it outside their lane. Worth knowing in advance which one you are. • This is a lab-based role at our site in King's Cross, London. The proteins are made in the lab, so most of your week will be too, with room for writing and analysis away from the bench. • The wider team is distributed and travels, so you will work with people who are not always in the building. • We work in the open. Decisions are written down, work happens in Slack rather than scattered across tools, and the week opens with a session the whole company attends. There is a quarterly offsite. Each person owns their area and makes the call inside it, and we will expect that of you early rather than late. • UK benefits are 30 days of annual leave plus public holidays, a pension with a 10% employer contribution, and top-tier Bupa private health cover. More is added as the team grows.