Senior Scientist I/II, Microbial Strain Engineering

COMPANY DESCRIPTION Flagship Pioneering is a bioplatform innovation company that invents and builds companies that change the world. We bring together the greatest scientific minds with entrepreneurial company builders and assemble the capital to allow them to take courageous leaps. Those big leaps in human health, sustainability and beyond exponentially accelerate scientific progress in areas ranging from disease detection and treatment and nature-positive agriculture to novel applications of AI that are driving the creation of new technologies. What sets Flagship apart is our ability to advance science and technology by uniting innovation, company creation, and capital investment under one roof in a way that is largely without precedent. Our scientific founders, entrepreneurial leaders, and professional capital managers are each aligned around an institutionalized process that enables us to innovate and transform for the benefit of people and planet. Many of the companies Flagship has founded have addressed humanity’s most urgent challenges: vaccinating billions of people against COVID-19, curing intractable diseases, improving human health, preempting illness, and feeding the world by improving the resiliency and sustainability of agriculture. Flagship has been recognized twice on FORTUNE’s “Change the World” list, an annual ranking of companies that have made a positive social and environmental impact through activities that are part of their core business strategies, and has been twice named to Fast Company’s annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. THE ROLE We are seeking a Senior Scientist I or II to lead microbial strain engineering efforts to support a novel biological platform within one of Flagship Pioneering's stealth mode startups. This role will focus on designing, constructing, and optimizing engineered microbial strains to enable scalable production systems. The successful candidate will drive strain development cycles from genetic design through experimental validation, working closely with our discovery and bioprocess development teams to translate early biological insight into strains that perform robustly in fermentation environments. This individual will contribute technical leadership within the technical operations function and help establish best practices for microbial engineering within a collaborative and fast-moving RD environment. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Design and implement microbial strain engineering strategies to improve production performance, stability, and robustness Construct and evaluate engineered strains using modern molecular biology and microbial engineering techniques (e.g., genome editing, pathway optimization, promoter engineering) Develop and execute iterative design-build-test-learn cycles to improve strain performance Characterize engineered strains using appropriate analytical assays and collaborate with bioprocess teams to evaluate strain performance under fermentation conditions Interpret experimental data and guide subsequent strain design decisions to advance production performance Contribute to the development of strain engineering workflows, best practices, and experimental infrastructure within the organization Mentor junior scientists or research associates and contribute to collaborative scientific planning PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE QUALIFICATIONS PhD in microbiology, molecular biology, synthetic biology, microbial engineering, or related discipline Scientist I: at least 5+ years of relevant experience in molecular or synthetic biology, with at least 2 years’ experience developing engineered microbial production strains Scientist II: at least 8+ years of relevant experience in molecular or synthetic biology, with at least 4 years’ experience developing engineered microbial production strains Demonstrated experience designing and executing microbial genetic engineering programs, including cloning, genome editing, or pathway engineering Experie ... (truncated, view full listing at source)