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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 partnerships with three Fortune 500 pharma companies, the company is positioned to fundamentally change how medicines are discovered.
The Senior Bioengineer will own the design and development of next-generation organoid culture formats and hardware. This is a hands-on, independent role with significant technical ownership across multiple workstreams. The position reports to the platform engineering team and works closely with assay development, automation, and software teams across sites.
Key responsibilities include:
1. Organoid Engineering: Design and test improved organoid formats, including scaffold composition, geometry, hydrogel and matrix selection, and perfusion systems. Develop new methods for introducing and positioning immune populations within tissue scaffolds. Design, prototype, and iterate custom culture hardware (plate inserts, membranes, compartmentalized wells, 3D-printed devices). Characterize designs by tying engineering changes to biological readouts.
2. Multi-Organoid and Multi-Tissue Formats: Determine plate architecture for multi-organoid systems, including positioning and parallel conditions. Design hardware that enables coupling of organoids through channels, shared compartments, membranes, or defined gradients. Build co-culture systems linking immune organoids to other tissue types to create disease models with defined readouts.
3. Transfer and Automation: Design formats with automated system constraints in mind to enable seamless bench-to-process transfer. Collaborate with assay development and platform teams on format characterization and validation. Implement bench-level automation for routine culture steps (media exchange, plate handling, sampling). Write and implement SOPs and hardware documentation.
4. Team and Culture: Work with the US-based platform team, share expertise with colleagues as the team grows, mentor junior researchers, and present findings in internal meetings.
Note: This role requires rotating weekend work to maintain cell cultures and experimental continuity.
Requirements:
- PhD in bioengineering, biomedical engineering, biophysics, biotechnology, or related field with 5+ years of hands-on experience beyond the PhD; OR MSc with 8+ years of industry experience.
- Demonstrated experience building 3D tissue or organoid culture systems, including hydrogels, scaffolds, ECM selection, and matrix characterization.
- Hands-on experience designing and fabricating custom culture hardware using CAD, 3D printing, soft lithography, laser cutting, or comparable prototyping methods.
- Solid cell culture skills and ability to work with primary human cells.
- Broad immunological background across innate and adaptive immunity.
- Practical experience with liquid handlers and associated lab hardware (Hamilton, Tecan, Lynx platforms), plate readers, and automated incubators.
- Track record of driving technical projects independently from concept through prototype to validated system.
- Comfortable working in parallel on multiple projects and setting priorities independently.
- Excellent cross-disciplinary collaboration skills.
- Strong documentation and communication abilities.
Advantages (not required):
- Experience with scalable organ-on-chip, microfluidic, or perfusion systems.
- iPSC culture or differentiation experience.
- Scripting exposure; familiarity with Python or R.
- Familiarity with imaging and computational analysis tools.
