Molecular Biologist

Are you ready to invent and produce DNA constructs that allow us to measure and perturb disease biology inside the cells of a living organism, in a massively parallel manner? You’ll find ways to improve signal-to-noise and throughput of our screens, using constructs from mammalian genomes and from synthetic biology, and test your ideas experimentally to produce constructs for use across the company.

Key Qualifications:

• You’re fluent in HiFi and Golden Gate assembly. Bonus points for experience with pooled library cloning.
• You design and execute multiple experimental threads to push multiple cloning projects forward at once.
• You have years of experience independently troubleshooting methods and experiments to get things working, and love having the right controls.
• You’ve thought about ways to identify and/or quantify specific constructs in your experiments, e.g. using fluorescent reporters, single cell sequencing, or targeted amplification for sequencing.

Bonus points for experience with perturbation screening, one or more areas of RNA biology (e.g. transcriptional regulation), or FISH.

The Company:
Gordian Biotechnology is a therapeutics company focused on diseases of aging, the major unmet medical need of our generation.
Age-related diseases have complex causes that include interactions with the aged environment, and traditional ex vivo screening methods have failed to produce effective treatments. In contrast, Gordian’s platform delivers and tests hundreds of therapeutics in individual animals to generate the most relevant preclinical datasets, at scale.

The Journey:
Our mission is ambitious, and the path will be full of both challenges and excitement. Two things characterize the Gordian experience: 1) We work as a team, with ownership in our own roles and trust in each other. 2) We strive for extraordinary outcomes, and in doing so grow our skills and capability.

Team – Relying on each other begins with transparency. We set clear goals, visible to all, connecting individuals and teams to our company objectives. This empowers each of us to make autonomous decisions with the bigger picture in mind. We give and receive feedback from a perspective of helping each other grow, share mistakes, and ask for help.

Extraordinary – Every day, we ask ourselves ‘could this process/outcome be even better?’. Knowing our overall mission, we do what we think helps us make the most progress, without asking for permission. We don’t shy away from big challenges or unknown territory, but find a way to excel. Our colleagues are amazing, both at what they do and as people. They inspire us to keep up, to not let them down, and be inspiring in return. 

Like any cutting-edge research environment, Gordian doesn’t believe in a standard 9 to 5 day. We set ambitious project goals and support each other to meet them, while maintaining the balance individuals need to thrive and achieve excellence. Our team is geared towards helping each other out and maintaining a culture of intellectual and social fun. We like getting things done and keep standing meetings to a minimum. Last year, in accordance with our unlimited vacation policy, each member took an average of 2.5 weeks of (offline) vacation, not including major holidays. We unwind with weekly team lunches, and support each others’ projects both experimentally and by collaborative planning. If this environment sounds appealing, help us bring it to life. We are at the beginning of a long journey, and want both your ability and your personality along for the ride. Our culture is a source of great pride; it represents both who we are, and who we wish to be. 

You can dive deeper here: https://www.gordian.bio/s/Values.pdf. 

And you:
You have a history of successful execution, both in- and outside of your job description. You want a chance to do your best work, immerse yourself and excel, with people you’ll want to spend your days with.
You truly want to play a key role in an early-stage startup: A fast-paced environment full of both uncertainty and new challenges, demanding relentless resourcefulness.
You have experience managing time-sensitive projects, in collaboration with other specialists. You have deep expertise, and broad curiosity. You are excited to use and develop cutting-edge technology to advance biology and human health.

Your mission as molecular biologist is to improve our core screening platform, by designing and testing DNA constructs with new and improved features. You’ll explore natural and synthetic biology for sequences that alter gene expression, interactions with transduced cells, etc., and run experimental projects to test these. You’ll also think about how the molecular details of single cell sequencing interact with our DNA constructs, and keep track of new single cell methods that could be useful for us. While doing this, you’ll support the rest of the company by producing vectors for screening, therapeutic validation, and more. You’ll quickly turn requests into constructs, and constantly be thinking about how the molecular biology infrastructure can be improved to speed up our work.
Gordian does a hefty amount of barcoded multiplexing, and most often you’ll be interpreting biology using sequencing data. Thriving in this environment means keeping a firm grasp of how individual molecules and their copies are moved through our workflows. Molecular biology is often the bottleneck for initiating new projects, so you’ll need to combine attention to detail with a bias for action. Your problem-solving will often take you into areas of science with a lot of unknowns, where you’ll use papers and consultants to quickly get an overview and then design experiments with plenty of controls to simultaneously test biological hypotheses and constructs that we could start using immediately. 
In your first month at Gordian, you’ll get fully up to speed on our proprietary DNA and single cell technology, and work with the Head of Platform to start two independent projects with the potential for at least two-fold improvement in our screens’ probability of success. You’ll drive these projects to completion within three months, and by that time have learned every experimental and collaborative process our molecular biology team is currently responsible for.

The Details:
Gordian aims to provide everything you need to thrive. Beyond our community and science, you’ll have enough equity to be a true stakeholder in the company, competitive salary, full health/dental/vision/life insurance, whatever vacation you need to be at your peak, remote work flexibility, and access to world-class mentors and advisors to support your professional growth. Our building is in South San Francisco.