R&D Scientist

About the position

This position presents an exciting opportunity for a Scientist with life sciences education and experience. The candidate is expected to substantially contribute to Research and Development projects in a leading ISO13485 - certified biotech company. The successful candidate will be part of a multi-disciplinary R&D team that integrates the expertise and experience of biologists, chemists, physicists and mechanical and electrical engineers. The candidate will support research and development of next generation genome sequencing and protein analysis platforms, including reagents, consumables and instrumentation systems. This role requires interactions with multidisciplinary teams within and outside of The Company.

Responsibilities

• Planning, execution and analysis of experiments to prove feasibility of new ideas and concepts.
• Generating feasibility data reports and presenting data in meetings.
• Writing protocols, executing experiments and performing data analysis.
• Presentation of results and conclusions in Reports and during Gate Review Meetings.
• Interaction with engineering and manufacturing Teams for prototype testing and assistance in product development and design verification activities.
• Migration of manually performed workflows to semi- and fully automated processes including the Company's Adaptive Focused Acoustics (AFA) instrumentation.
• Ability to understand and to follow ISO13845 Operating Standards in all day-to-day activities.
• Feasibility experiments that may include sample prep, i.e., isolation of biomolecules such as nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and protein, downstream processing and analysis, with and without use of Covaris' proprietary AFA technology.
• Analysis of nucleic acids, such as quantification using various methods, including absorption, fluorescent quantification, qPCR and digital PCR mediated assessment of quantities and quality, electrophoretic molecular weight analysis, NGS library construction and sequencing runs on Illumina platforms.
• Analysis of proteins, including trypsin digests, ELISA assays and fluorescent quantification.
• Microbial and eukaryotic cell culture to develop novel sample prep workflows for manual as well as automated workflows.
• Generation of Protocols, SOPs and work instructions.
• Planning, directing and assisting V&V activities.

Requirements

• Ph.D. or M.S. degree (MS with 2-3 years of experience) in biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, clinical diagnostics or a related life science field.
• Experience in industrial/commercial settings is a plus.
• Basic knowledge of document-controlled development processes is required.
• Experience with NGS data analysis and NGS Technology in general is a plus.

Nice-to-haves

• Product development experience in a competitive environment.
• Solid analysis skills including Excel spreadsheet-based analysis and documentation, basic statistical knowledge.
• Experience in basic molecular biology techniques (PCR, electrophoresis, nucleic acid or protein isolation and purification).
• Knowledgeable about sterile cell cultures techniques.