Massachusetts Green Jobs

Apply NowScientist I, Microbial Sourcing & Evaluation at Indigo (View all jobs)

Boston, MA

Since 2014, Indigo has questioned agriculture's full value chain to improve grower profitability, environmental sustainability, and consumer health. The company’s scientific discoveries and digital innovations have amplified new value from soil to sale, benefiting tens of thousands of growers across millions of acres. Indigo is also the company behind Indigo Carbon, - a program that pays growers to reduce on-farm emissions, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and improve soil health. In 2019, Indigo was ranked #1 on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list, placing again among the top three in 2020. Headquartered in Boston, MA, Indigo has additional offices in Memphis, TN; Research Triangle Park, NC; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Basel, Switzerland; and São Paulo, Brazil.

Indigo is working to harness nature to sustainably feed the planet. We have discovered a transformational opportunity to improve global crop yield and reduce the use of agricultural chemicals and fertilizers by utilizing the core microbiome inside plants to confer material yield and crop protection benefits across a variety of crops, geographies and stresses. The challenge and opportunity for Indigo is to gain critical first mover advantages by scaling quickly and effectively ($1B 2020 revenue.)

The role of the Scientist I, Microbial Sourcing and Evaluation will be to assist a team of scientists and research assistants by running pipeline assays and developing new In Vitro assays to characterize our microbes. This position will play a key role in running, adapting, and developing our assay portfolio to quickly assess a microbe’s potential to become a commercial product.

Responsibilities:

Research Excellence:

• Review allIn Vitroassays run by the team, and take over screening of multipleIn Vitroassays

• Generating quality screening data to pipeline team

• Develop reports, charts, graphs, and tables for the use by lab members and project teams

Technical Expertise:

• Review all SOPs for the in vitro screens and propose additional ways to automate the assays

• Become fully integrated with the screening team and fluent in performing all assays

• Own specific projects in coordination with scientists to identify microbial candidates to move through to next stage in pipeline

• Develop a new assay to predict success of beneficial plant-microbe interactions

Data Integrity:

• Review all data analysis pipelines

• Run data analysis pipelines to analyze raw data and identify hits

• Become familiar with pipelines to ensure that screening data meets Quality Control metrics and is uploaded to master database

Key Competencies:

• Keen attention to detail

• Advocate for automation

• Excellent communicator

• Demonstrated ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ever-changing project environment; an adaptable organizer and project manager who can quickly prioritize

• Positive attitude

• Able to work independently and as part of a team; instinctively collaborative

• Actively seeks and listens to feedback

• Able to identify problems and implement solutions

• Able to translate a research plan into a well-executed experiment

• Curious; strong desire to continue learning and developing

• Ability to troubleshoot technical challenges

• Understands the interactions between microbes and plants. Has ability to provide insights on how to study the interaction and turn into assays

Preferred Qualifications:

• Recent PhD degree in Microbiology, Biochemistry, Plant Science, or related field

• Experience in data management/data governance

• Proven track record developing and running microbial or biochemical assays in high-throughput

• Expertise using standard automation for running assays

• Experience with data analysis of large data sets and hit identification

• Experience in sterile technique and bacterial/fungal culture techniques

Indigo is committed to living our values, specifically “creating a work environment where everyone feels respected, connected, and has opportunities to learn and grow.” As part of living our values, we strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone feels they can be themselves and has an equal opportunity of succeeding