Principal Scientist / Senior Principal Scientist, Virology
Job Description
Virology - Principal Scientist / Senior Principal Scientist
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Location: Seattle, WA (onsite)
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Company: Venture-backed biotech (stealth mode)
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About the Company
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We're an early-stage, venture-backed biotech operating in stealth mode. We're building a small, high-performing team that moves quickly from question to experiment and works closely across disciplines to make clear, data-driven decisions.
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The Opportunity
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This will be the second scientist on our internal virology team. We are seeking a senior individual contributor who combines scientific leadership with substantial bench execution.
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This is a hands-on player-coach role. You will work alongside our Senior Scientist to expand live-virus neutralization capabilities, own and grow our viral strain library, and establish advanced human airway models in-house. Success will come from designing strong experiments, generating high-quality data, troubleshooting difficult methods, and helping a small team move quickly.
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What You'll Do
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Run live-virus neutralization and infectivity assays
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- Design, optimize, and execute in vitro neutralization assays using live virus and, where useful, pseudovirus or reporter-virus systems.
- Perform and interpret TCID50, plaque, focus-forming, or related infectivity assays. Establish controls, acceptance criteria, and data-quality standards that support reproducible decisions.
- Troubleshoot assay performance across viral strains, cell substrates, reagents, plate formats, and readout methods. Improve throughput without sacrificing rigor.
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Own the viral strain library and stock quality
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- Maintain a well-characterized library of viral strains, including sourcing, receipt, quarantine, inventory, passage history, master and working stocks, aliquoting, storage, and distribution.
- Propagate and titer viral stocks. Optimize cell substrate, multiplicity of infection, media, culture conditions, harvest timing, clarification, and freeze-thaw conditions when strains do not grow reliably.
- Sequence viral stocks to confirm identity, genetic integrity, and consistency with expected sequences. Review and document consensus changes and relevant minority variants.
- Create fit-for-purpose stock-release criteria and records that connect passage history, titer, sequence, sterility or contamination checks, and intended experimental use.
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Establish human nasal organoid and air-liquid interface models
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- Develop and run infection and neutralization studies in human nasal organoids and/or primary human airway epithelial cells differentiated at an air-liquid interface (ALI).
- If these methods are new to you, train hands-on with our academic collaborators and rapidly transfer their protocols, critical reagents, quality criteria, and analytical readouts into our lab.
- Troubleshoot donor variability, epithelial differentiation, infection conditions, dosing, sampling, and virologic readouts to produce robust and interpretable data.
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Advance applied virology and lab operations
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- Conduct serial-passage, escape-selection, plaque-purification, clonal-isolation, and fitness experiments as program needs evolve.
- Help scale day-to-day BSL-2 operations, including SOPs, biosafety practices, equipment readiness, sample tracking, inventory, and interfaces with facilities and vendors.
- Coordinate selected work with external laboratories and academic collaborators while retaining direct ownership of experimental design, data quality, and interpretation.
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Provide scientific leadership while remaining hands-on
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- Work as a close technical partner to the existing Senior Scientist. Share methods, review data, and raise the quality and pace of the team's experimental work.
- Present concise data summaries, conclusions, and recommended next steps to scientific and company leadership.
- Author protocols, SOPs, technical reports, and relevant sections of regulatory documents.
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What You'll Bring
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Minimum qualifications
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- Ph.D. in virology, microbiology, molecular biology, cell biology, or a related field, with 6+ years of relevant postdoctoral and/or industry experience. Meaningful industry experience is strongly preferred.
- Deep, recent hands-on experience propagating, quantifying, and troubleshooting live viruses in a BSL-2 environment.
- Demonstrated expertise developing and running cell-based neutralization or infectivity assays, including relevant controls, curve analysis, acceptance criteria, and assay troubleshooting.
- Experience managing viral stocks or strain collections, maintaining passage histories, and using sequencing to verify stock identity and quality.
- Strong mammalian cell-culture skills and a track record of diagnosing difficult strain-, cell-, or assay-dependent problems at the bench.
- Experience with human nasal organoids or ALI cultures, or closely related expertise in primary epithelial cells, 3D organoids, complex co-culture systems, or tissue-derived models that would enable rapid training and method transfer.
- Willingness to travel periodically to academic collaborators for hands-on training and to reproduce their methods internally.
- Strong documentation and data-integrity practices, with the ability to communicate experimental results clearly to specialists and non-specialists.
- A clear preference for a senior role that remains approximately 80% laboratory-based.
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Preferred qualifications
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- Direct experience establishing and maintaining human nasal organoids, airway organoids, or primary airway epithelial ALI cultures.
- Experience working across multiple viral strains and cell substrates, including strains that require nonstandard propagation conditions.
- Practical experience with targeted amplicon or whole-genome sequencing, sequence alignment, variant review, and contamination or mixed-population assessment.
- Experience with serial passage under selective pressure, plaque purification, clonal characterization, and viral fitness studies.
- Familiarity with imaging-based infectivity readouts, qPCR or dPCR, and high-throughput plate-based workflows.
- Experience helping establish or expand BSL-2 laboratory capabilities in a startup or similarly resource-conscious environment.
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Traits for Success
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- Hands-on and low-ego. You are comfortable setting scientific direction and then doing the experiments yourself.
- Resourceful and rigorous. You can troubleshoot an unfamiliar system, identify the variables that matter, and reach a defensible answer quickly.
- Collaborative and direct. You share credit, communicate clearly, and work well alongside another strong bench scientist.
- Comfortable in a small, lean company where priorities evolve and every scientist contributes at the bench.
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Tools & Environment (representative)
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- Class II biosafety cabinets; CO2 incubators; adherent and primary cell culture; organoid and Transwell/ALI culture systems; plate readers and imaging platforms; centrifugation and sterile processing; plaque, focus-forming, and TCID50 workflows; qPCR/dPCR; targeted sequencing workflows; cold storage (-80 C/-20 C/4 C); ELN and sample/inventory tracking systems.
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Title & Level
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- We expect to hire at the Principal Scientist or Senior Principal Scientist level, based on experience. This is a senior individual-contributor position. Mentoring and technical leadership are important, but direct laboratory work will remain central to the role.
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Why Join Us
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- Join as the second member of the internal virology team and directly shape the methods, strain collection, and experimental standards that guide our programs.
- Build advanced human-relevant infection models in close collaboration with experienced academic investigators.
- Work with seasoned company builders and scientific leaders in a small team where strong bench science directly informs decisions.
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Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to building an inclusive environment for all employees.
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How to Apply: Please send your CV and a brief note highlighting your recent hands-on experience with live-virus neutralization, viral stock propagation and sequencing-based quality control, and human nasal organoid/ALI or related advanced cell-culture models.