What are the responsibilities and job description for the Director, Platform Biology position at Humba Ventures?
At Parallel Bio, we are using the immune system to unlock safer, more effective drugs. By creating access to genuine human biology in a diverse, reproducible, and scalable way we’re changing the way researchers find, test, refine, and deliver these life-changing therapies.
If your skills, experience, and qualifications match those in this job overview, do not delay your application.
The human immune system is the master regulator of health and disease in our bodies. Current tools used to discover drugs that target the immune system are wildly inadequate. To fix this critical gap, Parallel Bio created a human ‘immune system in a dish’ to rapidly accelerate the development of new drugs and immunotherapies more likely to work in patients. This means developing drugs that are known to safely work in humans before the first patient receives the first dose and an end to needlessly destroying millions of lab animals in the pursuit of human health.
By blending this biological innovation with the latest in high-throughput lab automation and integrated data capture & analysis, we’re creating a new type of biotech – one that brings the advantages of cloud computing to next-generation wet lab studies.
Why Work With Us
As a biologist, joining our team means :
Pushing forward the understanding of how the immune system functions with real-world experimentation.
Helping create new experimental methods that can be repeated and varied from the keyboard instead of the bench.
Learning modern data & software practices - techniques considered beyond the cutting-edge in biotech.
Creating experiments where copies of the same organism can be held constant - either for varied treatments or repeated across replicants to drive down scientific uncertainty.
Access to diverse populations varied by sex, age, race, medical history can be used repeatedly and repeatably.
As a technologist, joining our team means bringing the rigor and scalability of computing into the biological domain :
Work a problem with clear benefits for humanity. This is work worth doing.
Bring modern software and data practices to biotech, an industry still catching up on 15 years of big data tech evolution.
The breadth of our systems is breath-taking : from low-level robotics programming to data science & visualization to AI models of immune response and everything in-between. As a small team we tend to work across these areas rather than be siloed into one of them.
Software is a first-class product concern at Parallel Bio, not a cost-center / service organization. We operate wet labs but we ship data-as-a-product.
Learn the intricacies of the biological computing system that is the human immune system : antibody selection and production is a complex search problem.
Responsibilities
We are seeking a Director, Platform Biology to lead our scientific team in executing and scaling pharmaceutical partnerships. This role presents a unique opportunity to bridge manual biological processes with automated solutions, while maintaining scientific oversight of both partnership execution and internal projects.
Build and lead a team of scientists and engineers to execute pharmaceutical partnerships, and to develop the biological aspects of the platform
Collaborate with pharmaceutical and biotech partners to define project scope and success criteria, ensure flawless execution of projects, present technical results and project updates internally and externally, and adapt experimental approaches based on partner feedback and requirements
Develop and implement scientific strategy for both manual and automated workflows
Provide scientific leadership for pharmaceutical partnerships and internal programs
Ensure scientific rigor across all platform operations, and institute and run processes for rapid troubleshooting
Collaborate with automation and engineering teams to optimize platform development and transition the immune organoid platform from mostly manual to fully automated
Collaborate with other internal stakeholders to continually assess platform bandwidth through co-development of capacity model
You will be a key member of the team and instrumental in defining and nurturing our culture around partnership execution and platform development. This role is a mix of technical and operational execution, external stakeholder management and development, and company-building.
Job Requirements
Note to candidates : the requirements listed here are an exhaustive list of useful traits but not a hard list of requirements. Candidates who don't fulfill one or more of the listed requirements but whom still think they are strong candidates are encouraged to apply.
Technical Abilities
Ph.D. in Immunology
12 years of relevant immunology research experience, with 6 years in industry
Deep technical expertise in lymph node biology and immunologic memory
Led multiple external collaborations with other companies, universities, and other entities
Strong track record of successful project execution and delivery
Excellence in experimental design and data analysis
Organizational Abilities
Experience hiring, training, and leading cross-functional teams
Ability to mentor junior scientists and provide technical leadership on complex projects.
Strong project management skills with experience overseeing the entire lifecycle of immunology projects—from concept through execution, analysis, and conclusion.
Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously while ensuring adherence to timelines, budget constraints, and quality standards.
Excellent problem-solving skills with a proven ability to troubleshoot complex biological issues in real-time.
Strong communication skills for effective collaboration with internal teams as well as external stakeholders.
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