Principal Platform Bioengineering & Assay Development (Organoids/AI)

Location: San Francisco, CA, USA; onsite leadership of the San Francisco scientific site.

Company

hirify.global is building a human-first drug discovery platform using organoids, AI, and human biological data to improve translation from preclinical research to clinical outcomes.

What you will do

• Lead the scientific team at the San Francisco site, including hiring, management, development, scientific direction, data review, and experimental decision-making.
• Develop and mature complex organoid, cell-based, and biological assays from initial concepts into characterized, robust, repeatable, and scalable workflows.
• Build technology-transfer frameworks, acceptance criteria, controls, reference data, documentation, and system-suitability approaches for moving assays from R&D into development and routine Technical Operations.
• Design characterization, optimization, scale-up, and troubleshooting experiments to understand and reduce variability caused by donors, operators, instruments, automation, reagents, biological materials, and environmental conditions.
• Partner with R&D, Technical Operations, automation, hardware, software, data, and platform teams to translate biological requirements into reproducible platform capabilities.
• Lead scientific execution for external pharmaceutical partner programs, from experimental design and interpretation through data delivery.

Requirements

• Ph.D. in Immunology, Cell Biology, Biology, Bioengineering, Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Biology, or a related discipline.
• Typically 10–15 or more years of relevant experience developing complex biological assays, models, and platforms. Equivalent combinations of education and experience will also be considered.
• Deep immunology expertise and hands-on experience with complex human in vitro models, organoids, primary immune cells, or advanced mammalian cell culture.
• Direct management experience with bench scientists, including setting scientific direction, running data reviews, and developing scientific judgment.
• Experience building biological systems from 0 to 1 and adapting them to automated or higher-throughput platforms.
• Experience with assay development, characterization, optimization, technology transfer, process development, and translating early-stage R&D methods into robust workflows.
• Experience identifying and controlling biological and technical sources of variability and developing assays or processes for automated or high-throughput environments.
• Experience establishing controls, acceptance criteria, reference standards, or system-suitability approaches for biological assays.
• Experience leading technically complex investigations and hypothesis-driven experimental troubleshooting.

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 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 with robotics, automation, software, data science, or machine-learning teams.

Culture & Benefits

• Mission focused on replacing animal models with scalable human biology and improving how medicines are discovered.
• Hands-on scientific environment combining bench work with platform and process development.
• Cross-functional collaboration across scientific, operational, automation, software, hardware, and data disciplines.
• Inclusive and respectful workplace committed to equal opportunity for applicants from all backgrounds.