Director, Strain Build & Design

Number of employees

140

Chicago, IL, United States

Posted on: 2021-09-23

Category: renewables

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Expired

Employment type:

Full time

Experience required:

Director

Salary

Salary not provided

About the company:

Nature’s Fynd is a Chi­ca­­go-based food com­pa­ny cre­at­ing ver­sa­tile alterna­tive pro­teins to nour­ish the world’s grow­ing pop­u­la­tion while nur­tur­ing the plan­et. Born out of research con­duct­ed for NASA on microbes in Yellowstone Nation­al Park, the company’s break­through tech­nol­o­gy pro­duces Fy™. Fy is a new-to-the-world, nutri­tion­al fun­gi protein that only uses a frac­tion of the resources required by tra­di­tion­al agri­cul­ture. We use Fy to make delicious, nutritious, and sustainable meat and dairy alternatives.

Nature’s Fynd is a groundbreaking food tech company born out of NASA-supported research on extremophiles in the geothermal pools of Yellowstone National Park. Our novel fermentation technology produces a sustainable source of complete protein using only a fraction of the resources required by traditional agriculture. As the challenge to feed the world’s expanding population grows, our mission is to create amazing foods and materials that provide sustainable choices and nurture the planet.

We’re looking for passionate, driven, and ambitious people to join our fast-growing team.

The successful candidate will be an engaged thought leader to drive development of filamentous fungi for heterologous protein production as well as discovery of genome modifications to improve production of current product.   The successful candidate will have a proven track record and building and leading productive technical teams. The successful candidate will serve as the resident technical expert on engineering of filamentous fungi including developing tools to genetically manipulate the strains using both traditional methods as well as gene editing approaches.   The candidate will possess deep knowledge of methods to create recombinant filamentous fungi. The candidate will help identify new and emerging methods for engineering filamentous fungi as well as characterization of protein produced.  The successful candidate will be instrumental in coordinating cross-functional collaboration with protein chemistry, fermentation, regulatory, and new business development. The applicant will be an accomplished leader and scientist with technical and business acumen to drive research projects from ideation-to-finish line.

Previous track-record of successfully developing recombinant microbial strains used to produced commercialized product(s) would be a plus.

This position will report to VP of Biotech R&D.



Duties & Responsibilities:

  • Manage and set direction for scientific staff engineering filamentous fungi and characterizing proteins
  • Member of Biotech R&D leadership team setting priorities and directions for organization
  • Developing and applying molecular tools to engineer to filamentous to produce heterologous proteins
  • Designing strain builds to develop new products
  • Discovering connections between genotypes and key phenotypes of filamentous fungi, to develop improved strains
  • Identifying, evolving and/or engineering new strains to realize the full potential of fungal expression hosts
  • Working well in teams to develop new technology and products you'd never achieve on your own
  • Manage innovation activities and completion of projects within agreed timelines
  • Provide data-driven insights to solve technical challenges
  • Interface with R&D, regulatory, manufacturing, and new business development for new product development, or improvement of existing products.
  • Prepare project proposals, conduct bench-top work, and analyze, summarize present scientific outcomes
  • Provide accurate, clear, and concise reports on R&D activities
  • Champion science-based, data-driven approach to solve complex problems
  • Identify, engage and establish internal and external technical collaborations with the customers, industry, and academic partners
  • Position Requirements:

  • PhD in Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Genetics, Chemical Engineering, or a related technical field. Positions at Director require a Ph.D. degree with 10+ years of experience including expert knowledge of scientific principles and demonstrated track record of leadership
  • Proven track record in building and leading technical teams
  • An innovative mind-set and can-do attitude coupled with an enthusiasm for engineering filamentous fungi for protein production and improving fungal biomass production.
  • Proven track record in strain improvement programs focused on protein expression, metabolic engineering or other applied objectives
  • Strong interpersonal, influencing, and project management skills
  • Technical expert in developing and optimizing molecular biology/synthetic biology tools for fungal strain engineering
  • Expertise in cloning / DNA assembly and gene editing
  • Expertise in the culture and genetic manipulation of fungal species
  • In depth knowledge in using standard genomics/molecular biology databases and software tools
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills as well as interpersonal skills
  • Excellent communication skills and statistical methods that are applied in design of experiments
  • Comfortable working in a start-up environment
  • Ability to work effectively in a team environment and influence technical direction
  • Strong problem solving and critical thinking skills
  • Company Benefits:

  • Participation in Employee Stock Ownership Program
  • 100% paid employee benefits
  • Ability to join a company with an aggressive growth trajectory
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