Scientist – Viral Vaccines

About Apriori Bio

Apriori is working to create a world that is protected against viral threats. Our pioneering approach centers on a unique technology platform, Octavia™, which allows us to survey the entire landscape of existing and potential variants to design new vaccines against the most threatening viruses. Octavia can also inform public health policy in real time by predicting the impact of emerging variants. Apriori was founded in 2020 in Flagship Labs, a unit of Flagship Pioneering.

Apriori Bio is an early-stage biotechnology company with an ambitious and exciting mission: to provide humanity with variant-resilient protection against rapidly-evolving viruses.  The company is developing a revolutionary approach to this challenge and recruiting a team of top-tier scientists to develop its Octavia™ platform.

Position Summary:

We are seeking an innovative and entrepreneurial Scientist (Sci I/ Sci II) with strong experience in molecular virology, viral evolution, and viral vaccines to help drive the development of Apriori Bio’s experimental platform. The candidate will be responsible for the design and execution of platform assays that will enable a pipeline of novel vaccines and other health interventions. This role will require collaboration with a matrixed team of scientists and computational biologists to execute the company’s scientific, technological, and commercial strategies. The ideal candidate will have a track record of success in inventing and deploying sophisticated tools for vaccine discovery and deriving unique insights from biological data – particularly with regards to protein structure and viral evolution. Experience with the design of vaccines or antibody therapeutics is essential.

Key Responsibilities:

• Work closely with other molecular biology, immunology and computational scientists within and beyond Apriori Bio, to support the design and deployment of innovative, proprietary assays
• Perform and oversee critical data-generating experiments
• Help build the infrastructure of laboratory protocols, tools, and systems to enable focused and rapid discovery and early vaccine pipeline development
• Apply rigorous methods to interpret emerging data in the context of key scientific questions
• Build insights and perspectives to help inform Apriori Bio’s scientific, technological, and commercial strategies
• Identify relevant external findings, tools, and datasets, and build on these as necessary to support company objectives
• Communicate insights and conclusions to the scientific team and executive management

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD. in molecular virology, cell biology, biochemistry, or a related field
• Experience with vaccine design using reverse vaccinology or computational protein engineering
• Deep understanding of the structure, function and characterization of SARS-CoV-2 spike, influenza hemagglutinin or other viral entry glycoproteins
• Previous work with biological sequence or protein structure datasets
• Understanding of viral phylodynamics and experience with viral pseudotyping
• Experience with mammalian cell culture and flow cytometry
• Familiarity with NGS methods and their implementation

Values and Behaviors

We are seeking individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit, strong communication skills, and comfort working in and contributing to a dynamic and cross-functional team environment. The level of the role will be commensurate with the education and years of experience of the identified candidate.

At Flagship, we recognize there is no perfect candidate. If you have some of the experience listed above but not all, please apply anyway. Experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way. We are dedicated to building diverse and inclusive teams and look forward to learning more about your unique background.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Flagship Pioneering and its affiliated Flagship Lab companies (collectively, “FSP”) do not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to FSP or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Flagship Pioneering’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of FSP, and FSP will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.