Research Associate / Technician (Protein Purification)

Airtree recently invested in an early stage biologics company. Currently in stealth, they exist to make biologics radically cheaper, so modern medicine reaches the people today's industry prices out, across both human and animal health. 

Discovery got cheap; manufacturing didn't, and the cost of making antibodies is now what keeps them from patients. That's the constraint we exist to break. We're building factories that deliver a 20–50x cost reduction at scale: more than 10 tonnes of drug substance a year, at under $10 a gram. Think of it as a foundry, a standardised platform that molecules adapt to, rather than a contract manufacturer running a bespoke process per client.

Our founding team has done a version of this before and we're building this company on the same engineering playbook, and hiring the people who'll make it real. We're hiring a research associate to run our purification work day to day, to a very high standard.

A process is only as good as how well it's run. We need someone who runs purification day to day with clean technique and clean data, so the team can develop the process fast and trust the numbers. This is hands-on lab work with real ownership, not a pair of hands following orders.

In your first 3-6 months, success looks like becoming a trusted owner of day-to-day purification execution: preparing buffers accurately, running FPLC/ÄKTA workflows consistently, documenting work clearly, and raising issues early when a sample, method, instrument or result is outside expectation. You'll know when to troubleshoot, when to ask for help, and when something needs to be escalated fast.

• →Running Protein A and polishing chromatography on the FPLC (ÄKTA) day to day: set-up, run, sampling and clean-down, to generate dependable, consistent data for customer programs.
• →Buffer and media prep, accurate and consistent. A lot of downstream quality lives or dies right here.
• →Executing the experiments and DoE the team designs, and capturing the data cleanly. A recent example: a small change to a wash step lifted Protein A yield by double digits.
• →Supporting analytics: cell culture sampling, titre, HPLC and ELISA prep.
• →Keeping the lab and equipment in good order, and flagging when something's off before it becomes a problem.

• A degree in biochemistry, biotechnology, chemical engineering, molecular biology or similar, plus solid lab experience.
• Genuinely good hands in the lab: careful, repeatable, quick. You take pride in clean technique and clean data.
• Curious about the science, not just the steps. You want to understand why the process works.
• Comfortable in a small, fast team where you'll be trusted with real responsibility early.

• Chromatography or FPLC / ÄKTA experience.
• Protein or antibody work; aseptic technique.
• Familiarity with electronic lab records or data tools.

Researchers work schedule is either Sunday - Thursday or Tuesday - Saturday.