Commercial Operations & Marketing Intern

Commercial Operations & Marketing Intern, Ginkgo Reagents

Massachusetts, United States

Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.

For the past 15 years, Ginkgo Bioworks has delivered bioengineering solutions for partners across biopharma and life sciences using optimized, high-throughput R&D processes. Ginkgo Reagents leverages this experience to develop, manufacture, and supply high-quality products—including cell-free protein synthesis, PichiaWorks protein expression, and proteins and enzymes—directly to customers in formats that are purpose-built for high-throughput, automated workflows. We design reagents that are reproducible, stable, and compatible with plate-based automation, reducing the time scientists spend on reagent prep so they can focus on designing and interpreting experiments. For our customers—from academic labs to pharma and AI-driven discovery companies—this translates into improvements in speed, throughput, scalability, and cost.

Job Description:

As the Commercial Operations & Marketing Intern on the Reagents team, you will play a critical role in the day-to-day success of Ginkgo’s Reagents business. You won’t just be watching—you will actively help manage the customer journey from the moment a scientist lands on our storefront to the moment their kit arrives in their lab. This role is a blend of digital marketing, sales and commercial operations, and customer success, and is ideal for a technical student who is curious about how science-based products are brought to market.

You will be mentored by members of the Reagents team and gain exposure to marketing, e-commerce operations, fulfillment, and customer success. In addition, you will have the opportunity to lead and support strategic initiatives that help the Reagents team operate more efficiently and serve customers more effectively.

The Ginkgo Bioworks Early Talent program is open to students who will return to their degree programs upon completion of their employment at Ginkgo. Candidates must be enrolled in a United States based institution and/or have work authorization in the United States to be eligible to participate.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Sales & Marketing Support

•   Content Coordination: Assist in updating product descriptions, technical specs, application notes, and blog content on the Reagents storefront to improve user experience and discoverability through SEO (search engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) for AI-powered search like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

•   Positioning & Messaging: Help develop positioning and messaging for specific product lines (e.g., cell-free protein synthesis, PichiaWorks, enzymes) tailored to pharma and biotech R&D, academic and research labs, and tech bio / AI-driven protein screening customers.

•   Lead Generation: Research and identify potential customers in academia, biotech, and AI-driven discovery companies who would benefit from Ginkgo’s specialized kits and reagents.

•   Campaign Execution: Help build and track email marketing campaigns, social media outreach, and conference materials targeting the scientific community; report on performance and iterate.

2. Order Management & Fulfillment Operations

•   Order Oversight: Monitor the e-commerce backend (e.g., Shopify/ERP) to ensure orders are processed accurately and move through the system without bottlenecks.

•   Logistics Coordination: Work closely with product operations and shipping teams to ensure cold-chain requirements are met and shipments are dispatched on time.

•   Inventory Tracking: Assist the product manager in monitoring stock levels of high-demand kits and reagents to prevent out-of-stock scenarios and inform reorder planning.

3. Customer Success & Experience

•   First-Line Support: Act as an initial point of contact for customer inquiries regarding order status, shipping timelines, and basic product questions.

•   Technical Troubleshooting: Coordinate with internal scientists to get answers for more complex technical questions and ensure customers receive timely, accurate responses.

•   Feedback Loop: Proactively reach out to customers post-purchase to gather feedback on product performance, unboxing, and overall experience, and feed insights back to product, science, and operations teams to drive future improvements.

Minimum Requirements:

•   Current enrollment in an undergraduate, master’s, or PhD program in a technical or science-related field (e.g., biology, biochemistry, molecular or cell biology, bioengineering, synthetic biology, or a related discipline)

•   Demonstrated interest in exploring marketing, sales, commercial operations, or customer success as a career path—through coursework, a minor or double major in business/marketing/operations, club involvement, prior internships, or self-directed projects

•   Comfortable working with digital tools—e-commerce platforms, CRM systems, and basic data analysis in Excel or Google Sheets

•   Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to write professionally and clearly to a scientific (including PhD-level) audience

•   Entrepreneurial, problem-solving mindset—happy to jump in and figure out why a package is stuck in customs or how to better explain a protocol to a customer

•   Strong analytical skills, with an ability to independently develop fact-based and informed opinions from customer, market, and operational data

•   Eagerness to learn quickly in a fast-paced environment and enthusiasm to be a part of Ginkgo’s mission

Preferred Capabilities and Experience:

•   Prior coursework, research, or internship experience in molecular or cell biology, bioengineering, or synthetic biology

•   Prior exposure to marketing, communications, business development, sales operations, customer success, or e-commerce roles—through internships, student organizations, or coursework

•   Familiarity with reagent workflows used in protein expression, enzyme applications, cell-free systems, or AI-driven protein screening

•   Working knowledge of SEO and AEO best practices—including keyword research, on-page SEO, structured data/schema, and content optimization for AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews)

•   Hands-on experience with e-commerce platforms (e.g., Shopify), CRM tools (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce), or SEO/AEO tools (e.g., Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Clearscope)

  Strong PowerPoint and Excel skills  Understanding of synthetic biology, drug discovery and development, or the broader life sciences tools market

What You’ll Learn:

•   How a platform biology company like Ginkgo productizes biological assets and brings them to market

•   The fundamentals of e-commerce and digital marketing in the life sciences sector, including SEO and AEO for scientific audiences

•   How to manage a high-touch supply chain involving temperature-sensitive biological reagents

•   How marketing, commercial operations, and customer success work together to grow a science-based product business

It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees, employment applicants, and EOE disability/vet.