Scientist / Sr Scientist / Staff Scientist - Antibody Platform Development (South San Francisco, CA)

Scientist / Sr Scientist / Staff Scientist - Antibody Platform Development (South San Francisco, CA)

Job Description

Twist is searching for a curious, thoughtful, and driven RnD scientist with excellent lab hands to enhance our antibody development platform development efforts. You will use your deep scientific experience and knowledge in various antibody and antibody-like modalities to  as well as expertise in molecular biology, cell culture, automation, and analytical techniques to create and improve platform technologies for antibody discovery, development and transition to the clinic. We are looking for people who have deep technical knowledge and a strong drive to get things done.

Job title and compensation will be determined based on several factors, including but not limited to the candidate's years of experience, individual skills, knowledge, and abilities.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop antibody production, purification and analytical workflows at various scales and throughput, across various formats (single-chain, IgG, multi-specific, Fc-Fusion, etc).
• Optimize all aspects of the end-to-end antibody development workflow including but not limited to: construct design, protein expression (transient and stable), purification, and analytics
• Independently design and execute experiments, and analyze experimental data
• As appropriate, build and lead a team to achieve technical goals
• Move projects forward efficiently / manage time and resources effectively / prioritize tasks in accordance with the company’s goals
• Document and communicate results clearly and succinctly
• Be helpful / collaborative / proactive
• Stay up to date with new developments, companies, and technologies
• Be the ultimate subject matter expert, and understand all aspects of your work as profoundly as possible, including details that are adjacent to your projects

What You’ll Bring to the Team:

• Deep hands-on experience designing, expressing, and optimizing monoclonal antibodies, with demonstrated understanding of Fc structure–function relationships (effector function, stability, manufacturability).
• Proven experience with bispecific antibody architectures, including but not limited to:
  • Knob-in-hole, CrossMab, common light chain, or similar
  • Chain pairing control, mispairing mitigation, and associated analytics
• Extensive experience generating and optimizing stable mammalian cell lines (CHO preferred):
  • Vector design, promoter/selection strategies
  • Clone screening, productivity optimization, and stability assessment
• Strong understanding of transient vs stable expression tradeoffs and when to deploy each during platform development.
• Experience improving expression yields and product quality through sequence, vector, and host engineering.
• Demonstrated ability to build, improve, and standardize antibody generation workflows.
• Experience developing high-throughput or semi-automated workflows for expression, purification, and screening.
• Strong understanding of platform robustness, reproducibility, and cost drivers.
• Hands-on experience with antibody characterization methods, including but not limited to:
  • SEC, CE-SDS
  • Binding kinetics (BLI or SPR)
  • Basic biophysical profiling (DSF, DLS)
  • Mass spectrometry
• Strong mechanistic understanding of antibody biology, structure, and expression bottlenecks
• Experience designing platforms that support multiple antibody modalities (mAbs, bispecifics, Fc-engineered variants)
• A track record of successful and creative method development
• Familiarity with Python or equivalent programming languages is a plus
• Experience with liquid-handling systems and automation is a plus

 Qualifications:

• Advanced degree in Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering, or a closely-related field
  • Scientist
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