Principal Platform Bioengineering & Assay Development

The role

You will lead the scientific team at the San Francisco site, managing scientists and research associates. You will set experimental strategy, own assay development, and perform hands-on bench work to solve difficult problems.

What you will do

• Lead the scientific team at the San Francisco site, including hiring and managing scientists.
• Set scientific direction and experimental strategy for the platform.
• Run regular data review with the team.
• Serve as the scientific lead for external partner programs.
• Remain close to the bench and engage in difficult experimental and troubleshooting work.
• Build biological systems from first principles.
• Own the development and maturation of biological assays and workflows.
• Translate early R&D assays into robust, repeatable, scalable experimental processes.
• Develop and execute characterization and optimization strategies for complex organoid and cell-based assays.
• Define and build the framework for transferring assays from R&D into development and Technical Operations.

Required qualifications

• Ph.D. in Immunology, Cell Biology, Biology, Bioengineering, Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Biology, or a related discipline.
• 10 to 15 or more years of relevant experience developing complex biological assays, models, and platforms.
• Equivalent combinations of education and experience will also be considered.

Nice to have

• Significant experience developing organoids, immune-cell assays, advanced human cell models, or other highly variable biological systems.
• Experience scaling biological workflows onto automated laboratory platforms.
• Experience with Design of Experiments, process characterization, capability analysis, or Quality by Design approaches.
• Experience working in regulated, quality-controlled, or highly documented scientific environments.
• Experience supporting pharmaceutical or biotechnology partners and translating external scientific questions into executable platform workflows.
• Experience partnering deeply with robotics, automation, software, data science, or machine-learning teams.

About the company

Parallel Bio is building human-first drug discovery powered by organoids and AI. The company aims to replace animal models with scalable human biology.