Scientist, NGS Assay Development

Recursion is a digital biology company industrializing drug discovery. Our team is working to solve some of the hardest, most meaningful problems facing human health today. Come join us in our mission to decode biology to radically improve lives, while doing the most impactful work of your life. 

The Impact You’ll Make

As a member of the biology team, you will be an internal expert in the development and application of assays based on next-generation sequencing, working closely with data scientists, software engineers, and other biologists to lead the selection and development of scalable NGS-based assays for Recursion’s drug discovery platform. In this role, you will:

• Strategize in collaboration with biologists and data scientists on the right NGS-based assays (any nucleic acid feature is on the table) to complement Recursion’s multi-petabyte-scale cellular perturbation and imaging platform.
• Develop prototype implementations of these assays, working closely with a team of molecular biologists and data scientists to rapidly build and evaluate new assay technologies.
• Scale interesting assays from research grade to high-throughput production grade in partnership with software engineers and laboratory automation experts. Imagine a million samples a week.

The Team You’ll Join 

With treatments for hundreds of diseases in our sights, we work side-by-side with data scientists, automation scientists, chemists, software engineers, and many others; together, we develop the assays, tools and methods to turn our experimental data into treatments for pathologies that affect the lives of countless individuals.  In this role, you will also use your experience to effectively gauge the scope and impact of your projects against the broader team and company goals in collaboration with a team lead and project manager.

The Experience You’ll Need

• Demonstrated experience envisioning, developing and implementing diverse NGS assay modalities (transcriptomics, variant calling, chromatin accessibility, functional genomics, etc.) and scales (from bulk down to single cells).
• Demonstrated experience envisioning, developing, and validating novel NGS-based assays with excellent theoretical and practical knowledge of library prep techniques and optimization. 
• Demonstrated experience implementing and scaling improved NGS-based assays and identifying appropriate quality and validation metrics.
• Demonstrated excellence at working on project teams you’ll be good at turning assays, experimental designs and analyses around quickly in collaboration with other biologists, data scientists and software engineers.
• A firm grasp of the fundamentals of probability, statistics, and machine learning: you’ll be helping us build a synthesis of molecular and image-based measurements at a scale unmatched anywhere else.
• PhD in molecular biology, genomics or similar field with 2+ years focused on NGS library prep techniques and protocol development.
• Nice to have: demonstrated experience with assay development in non-NGS modalities (e.g., imaging, proteomics, systems biology approaches)

The Benefits/Perks You’ll Enjoy

• 100% Coverage of health, vision, and dental insurance premiums 
• 401(k) with generous matching (immediate vesting)
• Stock option grants
• Two one-week paid company closures (summer and winter) 
• Flexible vacation/sick leave
• Generous paid parental leave (including adoptive)
• Onsite daycare facility*
• Commuter benefit and vehicle parking to ease your commute* 
• Complimentary chef-prepared lunches and well-stocked snack bars* 
• Fully-paid gym membership to Metro Fitness, located just feet away from our headquarters* 
• One-of-a-kind 100,000 square foot headquarters complete with a 70-foot climbing wall, showers, lockers, and bike parking*

*Subject to change for remote-based employees during the COVID-19 pandemic

More About Us 

Recursion is a digital biology company industrializing drug discovery. Recursion does this by combining automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, in vivo validation capabilities and a highly cross-functional team to discover novel medicines that expand our collective understanding of biology. Recursion’s rich, relatable database of over 4 petabytes of biological images generated in-house on the company’s robotics platform enables advanced machine learning approaches to reveal drug candidates, mechanisms of action, novel chemistry, and potential toxicity, with the eventual goal of decoding biology and advancing new therapeutics that radically improve people’s lives. Recursion is proudly headquartered in Salt Lake City.

Recursion is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. Recursion strictly prohibits and does not tolerate discrimination against applicants because of race, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, sex, pregnancy, gender (including gender nonconformity and status as a transgender individual), age, physical or mental disability, citizenship, past, current, or prospective service in the uniformed services, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, or local law.