Scientific & Technical Projects Scoping Lead Zymergen, Inc.
Emeryville, CA

Job Description

Scientific & Technical Projects Scoping Lead

At Zymergen, scoping is the process through which we develop an internal technical project plan and an external proposal for both client-facing and principal projects. Project proposals will become full-fledged development projects upon signing of a term sheet (commercial) or internal approval (principal). Scoping is an interdisciplinary process that includes building and evaluating a business case for a given project, evaluating its technical feasibility, and drafting a project plan that that specifies high-level activities, targets, and timelines. The Product and Business Development (BD) teams are responsible for the business case and the scientific and technical scoping lead is accountable evaluating technical feasibility and creating the project plan.

For client-facing projects, scoping leads to term sheet negotiation that involves the creation of a term sheet based on the technical proposal (including targets and timelines) as well as commercial and IP terms. Scoping sketches out a project proposal and plan that both Zymergen and the client find sufficient to warrant the investment of time and resources into the project.

The scientific and technical scoping lead is accountable for technical oversight and management of a set of activities that result in technical plan and proposal. She or he is also accountable for running internal V1 and V2 checkpoints that allow Zymergen to evaluate and improve technical proposals before they are finalized. Scoping is highly cross functional and requires input from functional capabilities, new product introduction, manufacturing, technology and data science etc.

Job activities include:

* Evaluate technical feasibility - develop a set of questions to gather technical information regarding the project
* Consult technical experts within the company regarding deliverables and feasibility
* Identify program steps & associated deliverables
* Set timelines based on key project deliverables in consultation with Data Science and other stakeholders
* Determine development resource requirements
* Work with BD to produce external and internal proposal materials that describe the project plan
* Identify project risks and mitigation strategies
* Exploring the regulatory/safety aspects that must be considered
* Routinely travel to client meeting and presentations
* Identify any freedom to operate/intellectual property aspects/issues
* Project Management, including but not limited to:
* Getting internal alignment on proposal and make informed recommendations to the leadership team
* Running checkpoint meetings and enforce the scoping business processes associated with scoping
* Continuously improving the scoping business process
* Responding to and manage incoming resources requests from BD and Products teams to ensure timely, high quality support of all scoping needs
* Supervise and train other scientists who may perform the above activities



Technical Skills include:

* Advanced degrees in biological sciences
* Coding/databases (applied to Biology)
* Statistics/quantitative methods (applied to Biology)
* Understanding of metabolic modelling
* Understanding of synthetic biology approaches

Leadership & management Capabilities include:

* Proven experience in project management and running technical strain improvement (or similar) projects
* Skills in BD, sales, or other external client communications including pyramid communication, external presentations, documents, and slides
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills
* Proven negotiation, collaboration and interpersonal leadership skills
* Proven matrix leadership to work across organizational boundaries to develop assessments
* Conceptual, analytical and strategic thinking with proven decision making capability
* Ability to influence strategically across all levels of the organization
* Experience with complex problem solving and dealing with ambiguity
* Has a personal organization system that allows attention to many tasks at once
* Able to tailor communication style to any audience from executives to research associates

Qualifications/Experience:

We favor candidates with a PhD in a related field (biology, chemical engineering, computer science, etc) and 5 or more years of relevant industry experience and project management.

Previous experience in the field of synthetic biology is not essential.