About the role

This role will support the Upstream Process Development team in characterizing and optimizing bench scale processes for novel marine cell lines, and to establish a solid foundation for upstream process scaling. You will perform experiments to implement your mammalian cell culture or fermentation process optimization knowledge at bench scale & pilot scale (batch, fed-batch or perfusion), to improve titers at pilot scale. You’ll be working closely with our Head of Process development to create novel upstream processes, with the goal of implementing them at Wildtype’s production site.

What you’ll be accountable for at Wildtype

• Lead a group of process development scientists
• Design, execute, and interpret scientific experiments from bench through pilot scale to understand cell culture as well as process variables.
• Implement and optimize upstream cell culture processes on pilot scale to increase yields/titers for novel cell lines. 
• Partner with our leadership team to define scale-up plans and work through technical roadblocks

What you’ll bring to the table

• 5+ years of hands-on cell-culture upstream bioprocess development experience
• 1+ years of experience managing 2-4 direct reports
• Experience developing upstream processes for a wide variety of cell lines
• Proven track record of conceptualizing new projects and driving those projects to completion
• An understanding of scaling process variables, such as, Kla, power values as they apply to scaling up/down an efficient process.
• Creatively applying your previous experience to the development of an entirely novel set of bioprocesses

What we’ll teach you

• How to apply your experience in large-scale cell culture to the production of next-generation seafood
• The unique context of cellular agriculture operations in support of cutting edge seafood production
• Wildtype advocates for transparency and sharing of ideas and information. You will be working alongside the Engineering, Production and, Cell line development teams where you can find out what they are working on, what intrigues and motivates them, understand the challenges and successes are that have led to the current production process

Impact plan

• Within 1 month you will have adapted your experience in process development to Wildtype’s unique context and would have conceptualized a line of investigation to improve process efficiency and/or yield at large scale. 
• Within 3 months You will have set your professional development goals for the next twelve months. You will have identified gaps in our scale up processes based on your preliminary experiments and initiated projects in collaboration with other crewmates to test your assumptions at pilot scale. You will have also assumed mentorship responsibilities for 1-2 scientists and will play an active role in developing the next generation of scientists at the company. 
• Within 6 months your efforts over the past six months will have resulted in significant yield improvements to Wildtype’s production efficiencies. You would have introduced novel methods and applications to improve process efficiency. You would have also represented your work at internal company meetings. 
• Within 12 months you will have a deep understanding of Wildtype’s upstream process to anticipate technical roadblocks and proactively initiate new process development strategies to meet our high yield targets.

The hiring range for this position is $140,000 - $180,000, plus 90th percentile equity.

Location: this position is an onsite role based in San Francisco.