Computational Synthetic Biologist, Design Team

Ginkgo Bioworks, Boston, MA

THE ORGANISM COMPANY

Duration: Full-Time

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. Today, our foundry is developing over 40 different organisms to make different products across multiple industries.

As a Computational Synthetic Biologist, you’ll support Ginkgo’s organism engineering programs by designing and analyzing high-throughput experiments. Plus, you’ll help to expand Ginkgo’s genetic engineering platform with the development of novel computational tools. By adding your own expertise to an interdisciplinary team of bench scientists, computational biologists, data scientists, and software engineers, your role will be critical to developing world-changing methods for engineering biology.

Please note: we recognize that not all candidates may meet the entire list of Desired Experience and Capabilities below. We’re eager to train the right candidates for this role, and encourage those who meet at least two thirds of the criteria to apply.

Responsibilities

Support Ginkgo’s organism engineering teams with your technical expertise in genetics, designing megabases of DNA for each project
Design high-throughput experiments that leverage Ginkgo’s foundry, with the goals of solving difficult biological obstacles and uncovering new design principles
Collaborate with stakeholders throughout Ginkgo to create next-generation synthetic biology tools — e.g. algorithms, data structures, predictive models, software pipelines, or experimental approaches — that yield step changes in our ability to engineer biological systems
Troubleshoot technically complex design problems, and propose solutions or experimental plans to resolve or correct for them
Maintain high-quality documentation of your work and discoveries, in the forms of written reports, technical presentations, electronic lab notebooks, internal database records, code comments, and software documentation

Desired Experience and Capabilities

PhD (or equivalent experience) in genetics, genomics, systems biology, biochemistry, computational biology, quantitative biology, or similar field; interdisciplinary work is strongly encouraged
2+ years of professional experience (grad school counts) with engineering one or more bacterial, yeast, or filamentous fungal species; wet lab experience is a plus
Proficiency with at least one software programming language (Python preferred); knowledge of best practices for collaborative software development (version control systems, test-driven development, and good documentation habits) is preferred
First-hand technical experience in at least two of the following disciplines: bioinformatics, sequence analysis, comparative genomics, phylogenetics, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) analysis, statistics, probabilistic modeling, machine learning, population genetics, metabolic engineering, and quantitative modeling of biological systems
Demonstrated ability to meet the demands of multiple concurrent projects, and work efficiently in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
Strong curiosity for, and comfort working in, areas of biology previously unknown to you (and, at times, unknown to your peers)

To learn more about Ginkgo, check out some recent press:

Ginkgo Bioworks CEO on scaling up Covid-19 testing: ‘If we try, we can win’ (CNBC)

Ginkgo raises $70 million to ramp up COVID-19 testing for employers, universities (Boston Globe)

Ginkgo Bioworks Redirects Its Biotech Platform to Coronavirus (Wall Street Journal)

Ginkgo Bioworks Provides Support on Process Optimization to Moderna for COVID-19 Response (PRNewswire)

The Life Factory: Synthetic Organisms From This $1.4 Billion Startup Will Revolutionize Manufacturing (Forbes)

Synthetic Bio Pioneer Ginkgo Raises $290 Million in New Funding (Bloomberg)

Ginkgo Bioworks raises $350 million fund for biotech spinouts (Reuters)

Can This Company Convince You to Love GMOs? (The Atlantic)

We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equality, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.

We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.

It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.

About Ginkgo Bioworks

Ginkgo Bioworks is the organism company. We design custom microbes for customers across multiple markets. We build our foundries to scale the process of organism engineering using software and hardware automation. Organism engineers at Ginkgo learn from nature to develop new organisms that replace technology with biology.