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Parallel Bio is building human-first drug discovery powered by organoids and AI. The company's platform achieves 87% concordance with clinical patient data, vastly outperforming the 3% translational success rate of animal models. With ~$30M in funding from AIX Ventures, Marc Benioff, Jeff Dean, and Y Combinator, and strong regulatory tailwinds from the FDA Modernization Act 3.0, Parallel Bio is positioned to transform how medicines are discovered.
As Principal Scientist, you will lead the science at the San Francisco site, managing a team of scientists and research associates while remaining personally engaged in bench work on the hardest problems. You will set experimental strategy and own the scientific decisions that determine where the company invests experimental effort.
Your primary responsibilities include: (1) Scientific Leadership—managing the scientific team, setting direction and experimental strategy, running data reviews to distinguish biological from technical effects, establishing high standards for experimental rigor and reproducibility, and serving as the scientific lead for external partner programs. (2) Assay and Process Development—building biological systems from first principles, translating early R&D assays into robust, repeatable, scalable processes, developing characterization and optimization strategies for organoid and cell-based assays, and leading troubleshooting of complex biological failures. (3) Technology Transfer and Platform Readiness—defining frameworks for transferring assays from R&D to operations, establishing objective acceptance criteria for platform readiness, ensuring sufficient documentation and controls, and partnering with Technical Operations to enable reliable execution by trained operators. (4) Scale-Up and Robustness—developing strategies for scaling workflows, understanding and reducing variability from operators, instruments, reagents, and biological materials, establishing process controls, and partnering with automation and software teams. (5) Cross-Functional Platform Development—collaborating with R&D, Technical Operations, Platform Software, and automation teams to ensure new assays are designed with scale and platform implementation in mind.
You will deepen understanding of how organoid models behave across donors, conditions, and operators, build reference data and controls, bring rigor to workflows, own assay development and maturation, manage technology transfer, and establish control strategies and characterization protocols.
