About Us:
Culture Biosciences has innovated the first and industry's only cloud bioreactor facility enabling companies to get critical experimental data faster, at their fingertips, and therefore progressing the development of sustainable materials, biotherapeutics, and more. Our teams combine their passion within science, engineering, software, and design to foster an environment of strong innovation by encouraging learning, development, problem solving, and teamwork. At Culture Biosciences we value curiosity, clear communication, kindness, collaboration, customer focus, and a drive for results.
Here's a video that explains the process.
The Role
Culture is hiring a VP of Bioprocessing R&D. In this role you will guide a team of engineers to design bioprocessing workflows in the context of Culture's unique systems: our team, our equipment, our facilities and our custom technology. The team determines how we connect our custom equipment with off-the-shelf systems and other utilities. They create engineering drawings, specs and a bill of materials for these facilities. With our COO, Ops teams and Real Estate groups, the Bioprocessing R&D group expands Culture's capacity. The team also expands our technical capabilities by evaluating new sensors, downstream systems and analytical capabilities. After raising an $80M Series B, Culture will place new large bets to expand our capabilities and enhance our existing product. We will develop new reactor formats and we are deploying more of our "workhorse" benchscale systems. To grow quickly and scalably, we need more rigor and definition for our Bioprocessing Pods. The leader of this group interfaces with the Product team to take concepts like "Culture will expand to enable a new capability for our customers" and turn them into a blueprint of the technical systems Culture will create to deliver this new capability at scale. The leader of the group works with the our Ops team to define clear and specific SOPs that can scale. This group owns Culture's unique perspective on bioprocessing. They develop and maintain Culture's standards for quality. The leader of this team oversees highly technical staff with domain expertise in fermentation, cell culture, quality management systems, large scale reactors, downstream separation/purification systems and advanced offline analytical systems.
What you'll do:
- Build a team of process engineers, chemical engineers and other highly technical experts from the world of bioprocessing.
- Develop and mentor new engineers and researchers at the company.
- Inspire and connect with IC engineers.
- Be the steward of the team's culture.
- Investigate, research and architect pilot-scale and commercial-scale manufacturing process flows. Extend our Operational Blueprint (team, equipment, facilities and custom technology) to encompass 250mL, 5L, 250L, Manufacturing-Scale reactors and downstream systems. Work in collaboration with our Product, TechOps and Hardware groups to develop a "storyboard" for these capabilities at Culture: how these facilities operate and the workflows within them.
- Facilitate the rollout of 250L and Manufacturing-Scale capabilities at Culture.
- Work with the Finance team to build operating models that inform our engineering and process designs.
- Drive the development and execution of our analytical expansion strategy.
- Work with other engineering leaders and the CTO to build a cohesive vision for our product offering across the disciplines of Hardware, Software, DataSci and Bioprocessing, and along the various axes of our customer's R&D needs.
About you:
- Passionate about hiring, team-development, mentorship and managing managers in a fast-growing organization.
- Opinionated on how to develop and shepherd a high-performance engineering culture.
- Skilled at storytelling, narrative-building, architecture.
- Able to communicate effectively to engineers and scientists of all stripes.
- You have led the buildout and/or operation of a bioprocessing pilot plant.
- You have deep knowledge in one or more areas of bioprocessing, ideally backed by an advanced degree in the field.
- You have designed new bioprocessing technology (e.g. reactors or DSP techniques).
- You have experience developing financial models (e.g. techno-economic models).
- Experience in working in a startup environment: nascent support groups, nascent processes, emphasis on speed, change and occasional ambiguity!
- Experience in a remote/hybrid working environment.
- Experience in working for a "first principles" company - a company that builds as much from scratch as possible.
- Experience in a company working in an unregulated space (and thus capable of more velocity).
In return, we will support you by:
- Placing a high degree of trust in your ideas and execution.
- Bringing you up to speed in the domain of biomanufacturing.
- Providing a low-stress work environment.
- Making ourselves available for collaboration.
- Caring about you as a whole person.
- Supporting your personal and professional growth.
Location & Schedule:
- This is a remote-friendly position.
- We're looking for someone who is /- 3hrs from Pacific time.
- Our HQ and most of our leadership team and operational staff are currently in South SF, CA.
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.