Engineer 1, Genetic Medicines

The Genetic Medicines Line of Business focuses on RNA and mammalian cell engineering, aiming to provide bust and reliable platforms for target discovery as well as more scalable and systematic approaches to the discovery and optimization of receptors, and mammalian cells. This work is particularly relevant in the fields of cell, gene, and RNA therapy.

The team is involved in various projects, including synthetic enhancer discovery as well as UTR/IRES discovery for RNA therapeutics, CAR-T cell screening, among others. In addition, the Genetic Medicines Team is involved in the construction of large libraries of specific DNA, which allows the ordering of the promoter library members by strength, determination of promoter activity across different cell types, or responsiveness of promoters to external stimuli such as small molecules.

This role focuses on expanding our capabilities to support our genetic medicine programs including high throughput nucleic acid manufacturing and QC, cell based assay development, iPSC and cell line culture, cell transfections/electroporation, flow cytometry, alphalisa and nucleic acids chromatography.

Responsibilities

• Support senior scientists and engineers in advancing Genetic Medicine projects by executing high-throughput screening and cell engineering experiments.
• Perform mRNA and circRNA QC by sCGE, HTRF, HPLC and endotoxin among others.
• Support RNA large scale RNA purification by chromatography.
• Maintain adherent and non-adherent mammalian cells in culture.
• Develop functional cell based assays and execute at a high throughput scale.
• Work with fellow Ginkgo engineers to integrate in vitro mammalian screens into Ginkgo's automation and software platforms.
• Attend, participate in, and present results at cross-functional team meetings
• Generate, analyze, and record high-quality data using Ginkgo LIMS, documentation, and database tools.
• Maintain laboratory records, and contribute to laboratory organization and maintenance.

Minimum Requirements

• BS in a STEM field with 1+ years of hands-on laboratory experience post-bachelor's degree, preferably in an industrial setting.
• Fluency in mammalian cell culture and cell-based assay development.
• Exposure to mammalian synthetic biology, including library-based approaches and mammalian construct design.
• Strong organizational, time management, communication, and interpersonal skills
• Comfort in a fast-paced environment and ability to adjust workload based on changing priorities, coupled with a demonstrated eagerness to learn new things

Preferred Capabilities and Experience

• Familiarity with laboratory automation.
• Familiarity with data analysis platforms such asPrism, Tableau, Python, R, and/or JMP.
• Experience with nucleic acid purification.