Founding Scientist, Biocatalysis

About the Role: You will be one of Praio's first hires, and you will own the biocatalysis pipeline from the gene to the purified product. This means producing the enzymes we work with, developing and characterizing their reactions in our protocell environments, and isolating and quantifying what those reactions make. You will build and oversee the protein production and analytical capability, develop reproducible procedures, and design experimental campaigns that drive critical company decisions. You will work directly with the founder, whose background is the polymer and formulation science behind the protocell. You bring the other half: how an enzyme is produced, measured and run in practice. We are looking for the generalist rather than the specialist. This role is best suited for ambitious, pragmatic and flexible scientists who are on a mission to produce results and create impact. In practice that means owning a problem end-to-end rather than optimizing one step of it, and deciding what comes next without being told. This is a hands-on role with real ownership of the work you perform, and as Praio grows, you grow with us.

Responsibilities: Produce the enzymes the work needs: construct design, cloning, recombinant expression in microbial hosts, lysis, purification, and characterization by gel and activity assay. Design, run and optimize enzymatic reactions in Praio's protocell environments, from screening in multi-well plates through reaction development to purified product, at scales from microplate to preparative. Develop, validate and run the analytical methods the work depends on: HPLC including chiral methods, LC-MS and GC-MS for conversion, selectivity and purity; clean controls and reliable kinetics. Own the instruments: maintenance, troubleshooting and method transfer. Do the bench-scale workup: extraction, phase separation, filtration, catalyst recovery and reuse, mass balance. Scale reactions from screening to preparative scale and support scale-up and technology transfer with partners. Tackle open questions at the intersection of proteins, polymers and condensate behavior. You will contribute to the invention disclosures and filings that follow. Scope, execute and report screens and evaluations with our testing partners, and be the technical voice our customers hear. Document the work to a transferable standard: electronic notebook, SOPs, customer protocols, reports. Help produce and quality-control screening panels, and share in the operation of a small lab: safety, equipment, ordering, waste.

Required Qualifications: PhD in biochemistry, chemistry, molecular biology, chemical engineering or a related field, with two to five years of hands-on experience in applied biocatalysis beyond the degree. Direct experience making an enzyme and then using it to make a molecule: designing or modifying the construct, expressing and purifying it, confirming activity, and then developing a synthetic transformation with it, as the responsible scientist for that work. Protein production: cloning and construct design including the choice and placement of tags, recombinant expression in E. coli or a comparable microbial host, and a purification route developed rather than inherited. Comfort working from crude lysate, and measuring a target activity against a messy background. Reaction development: enzyme screening and characterization, and developing and optimizing biocatalytic reactions from multi-well plates through to purified product. Analysis: experience with the instrumentation the work depends on, including HPLC with chiral separations, LC-MS and GC-MS, for conversion, selectivity and purity. Working practice: electronic notebook discipline, procedures another person can run, clear communication with colleagues and customers, and a safety-first approach at the bench.

Preferred Qualifications: Industry experience at an enzyme company, a biocatalysis group, a CDMO or a pharmaceutical process development organization, with a record of improving a process against real targets: yield, throughput, enzyme loading, catalyst lifetime. Protein engineering of any kind, whether directed evolution, rational design or computational, including affinity tag and fusion protein design, protein-polymer conjugates or enzyme immobilization. Knowledge of biomolecular condensates and liquid-liquid phase separation, whether from the biology or from working with synthetic coacervates. Biocatalysis in organic solvents, biphasic or multiphase systems, or continuous flow, and experience taking a reaction from bench to preparative scale with the isolation and mass balance that go with it. Design of experiments, kinetic modeling, analytical method development, high-throughput experimentation and laboratory automation.

Compensation: Base compensation of $53 to $75 per hour, depending on experience (equivalent to roughly $110,000 to $155,000 per year on a full-time basis).Meaningful founding equity, vesting over four years with a one-year cliff. Health insurance and a retirement plan from conversion to full-time employment.