Program Director, Cell Therapy

Ginkgo’s mission is to make biology easier to engineer. We are 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.

Ginkgo is continuously crossing new frontiers of biological engineering and we have a record of delivering what was, until recently, thought impossible. Now, our expansion into mammalian cell engineering promises to push our boundaries even further, and so we’re looking for pioneering engineers to make Ginkgo’s new mammalian cell foundry a success.

While CAR-T therapies have seen remarkable success in the clinic, we are at the dawn of the new age in cell therapy. We’re searching for an outstanding senior leader to provide strategic direction and leadership of technical teams to deliver success on Ginkgo’s cell therapy programs. In this role, you will bring your deep cell therapy expertise to Ginkgo’s high throughput, automated Foundry to grow and develop a team. To be successful in this role, you will draw on your understanding of the limitations of current immune cell therapies and your vision for next generation solutions, your fluency with all relevant cell engineering technologies,  your expertise in construct design and primary immune cell assays and your ability to work with people across teams and levels. As a self-motivated and organized team leader, you are efficient and nimble, able to re-prioritize with the changing demands of a fast-paced environment. The Program Director, Cell Therapy role is integral to the continued growth of our Mammalian Foundry team. 

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Responsibilities

• Provide technical direction for next generation cell therapy projects including combinatorial CAR design, logic-gated CARs, NK-CARs, Tregs, and iPSC-derived immune cell therapies
• Serve as senior leader in immunology and immuno-oncology 
• Support resource management and project management across the broader project team
• Grow, supervise, and mentor a small team of researchers working on cell therapy projects
• Communicate project progress to leadership and external customers
• Identify and help develop new technologies to drive next-generation cell therapy development
• Participate in Ginkgo’s Business Development efforts by serving as a subject matter expert in cell therapy to critically evaluate various approaches
• Assist with shaping Ginkgo’s overall direction as a company and support its evolving needs, as necessary

Desired Experience and Capabilities

• PhD in immunology, biology, bioengineering, or related field 
• 5+ years of research experience post-PhD, with at least 3 years of industry experience in cell therapy development
• Direct experience and technical leadership with tackling challenges in immune cell engineering, as demonstrated by achieving program milestones, publications, etc.
• Significant gene editing experience in primary immune cells including non-viral targeted insertion methods
• Strong molecular biology expertise, including next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies 
• Excellent project management skills, with the ability to oversee multiple projects simultaneously, meet deadlines, and collaborate with cross-functional teams
• Proven track record of leading successful teams and mentoring multiple team members
• Ability to work with interdisciplinary teams in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
• Excellent communication and organization skills, with the ability to effectively convey project plans and complex technical information to a wide range of internal teams, executive leadership, and external partners
• Eagerness to help build a young team

Additional Preferred Experience and Capabilities

• Experience with iPSC culture and differentiation
• Familiarity with laboratory automation 
• Familiarity with data analysis platforms such as Python, R, and/or JMP

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

What is it really like to take your company public via a SPAC? One Boston biotech shares its journey (Fortune)

Ginkgo Bioworks resizes the definition of going big in biotech, raising $2.5B in a record SPAC deal that weighs in with a whopping $15B-plus valuation (Endpoints News)

Ginkgo Bioworks Is Turning Human Cells into On-Demand Factories (WIRED)

Ginkgo Bioworks Redirects Its Biotech Platform to Coronavirus (WSJ)

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

The engineering of living organisms could soon start changing everything (The Economist)

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)

This food tech startup just raised $90 million to make it easier to invent new plant-based meats (Fast Company) 

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, equity, 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.

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