Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.
Core to our organism engineering pipeline is the testing and analysis of our engineered strains. On the Omics and Analytical Chemistry team, we leverage diverse analytical tools to get a detailed picture of the performance of these strains. Our analytical approaches are designed to work across dozens of different cultured ingredients and scale 100-1000x via software and automation. We’re seeking highly skilled, aspiring analytical chemists to join our testing team, where you will help to operate, improve and scale our chromatography based strain analysis pipelines.
As an Analytical Chemistry Intern, you will work with high-throughput omics-analytical chemistry engineers in process improvement and daily operations with a focus on quality and scale. This can include the standardization and implementation of automation for sample prep, continuous strategic improvement of methods and lab processes, and the standardization and execution of stable services and core pipelines. While gaining hands-on lab experience with advanced analytical instrumentation, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with Automation, Data, Lab Operations, Fermentation, and Foundry Operations teams.
Possible projects will focus in operational improvement areas such as lab organization, workflow optimization, and automation tailoring for projects. This could include improving a sample prep process, onboarding a piece of automation equipment and applying this to a current Omics service, and streamlining team documentation. We are eager to give a candidate the opportunity for more hands-on experience in an industrial setting, on both small and large scale operations!
The Ginkgo Bioworks Early Talent program is open to students who will return to their degree programs upon completion of their employment at Ginkgo. Candidates must be enrolled in a United States based institution and/or have work authorization in the United States to be eligible to participate.
Responsibilities
- Develop automated workflows and validate automated sample prep workflows
- Audit existing processing and propose improvements
- Coordinate with multiple stakeholders to design, deploy, and validate new capabilities and solutions
- Operate our in-house Liquid/Gas chromatography methods for quantitative and qualitative analysis of target analytes
- Engage in troubleshooting and maintenance of instrumentation
- Participate in the implementation of quality controls to new and existing assays
- Utilize in-house LIMS and data capture pipelines to efficiently deliver high quality data within expected turnaround times and quality specs
- Utilize our fleet of Hamilton liquid handling robotics to execute on high throughput analytical sample prep
- Work with other members of the Analytical Chemistry team to drive standardization, quality processes and documentation towards improving our analytical infrastructure
Minimum Requirements
- Currently enrolled in an associate’s or bachelor’s degree program; currently a freshman, sophomore, or junior at the time of application
- Currently majoring in chemistry or chemical engineering, or biology, biochemistry, life sciences or biotechnology with strong chemistry coursework
- Basic understanding of chemical safety and analytical chemistry, and knowledge of analytical balances
- Quantitative analysis experience
- Prior knowledge of rudimentary analytical statistics (standard deviations, coefficients of variance, regression analysis, etc.)
- Strong verbal and written interpersonal skills
- Strong organizational skills with high attention to detail
Preferred Capabilities and Experience
- Prior wet lab experience with a pipette and chemical solvents
- Desire to work on fast-paced projects and contribute to Ginkgo’s mission to make biology easier to engineer
- Experience with liquid handlers such as Hamiltons for sample preparation
- Experience working within a cross functional environment
We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.
We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.
It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.
