Head of R&D

How to applyApply through the form below. It takes about 10 minutes. Along with your CV, it asks for:a short message on why Abstract, why now and why youone example of how you use AI at workWe read every application ourselves and reply within a week. You will only be considered if you apply through the link below: https://abstractbio.notion.site/abstract-bio-careers TLDRWe are building the biological inputs factory that will unlock AI for biology, starting from DNA, the first building block of every biomolecule. Demand for our first DNA product outran our capacity within months of launch, and we are now scaling 10x. As our Head of R&D, you will own the science that decides our cost per base-pair, our yield, and how far past today's limits of length, complexity and fidelity we can push. You will set the research agenda, build and lead the team that executes it, and hand production a platform that gets cheaper every quarter. The best candidate is a scientist who still runs the hard experiment themselves, has shipped a method into a production environment at least once, and values impact over title. Your role will evolve with time; you should be excited by that and step up when needed. THIS IS NOT A 9 TO 5. Story and missionThe Bessemer process made steel cheap and set off the Second Industrial Revolution. AI is now doing the same to biological design, and cloud labs and robots are doing it to testing. That pushes the bottleneck to the build step: the physical inputs. Every protein and every RNA starts as DNA, and DNA is still expensive. With current suppliers, the DNA to test one therapeutic antibody design costs around $100 per data point; a good antibody needs thousands of them, and a good antibody model needs millions. Abstract Bio is building the factory for those inputs, starting from DNA, the first building block.We brought a DNA product, 4-10x cheaper than incumbents, to market within 6 months of founding the company. With a team of three and word of mouth alone, demand quickly outran our capacity, so we are now building for true scale. This means a 10x larger production platform, adding long and plasmid DNA, and starting the first R&D on RNA and proteins.Scaling production is only half the problem. The other half is the science: every order we ship is bounded by the cost, length, complexity and error rate of our chemistry and assembly methods. Moving those boundaries is the job of R&D, and so is taking us up the value chain. RNA and proteins sit directly above DNA in the same supply chain, and whoever owns the cheapest source of DNA has an unfair advantage in making every other biomolecule. Our North Star is to be the biological inputs factory that gives scientists any biomolecule, on demand: the missing part of the stack that will unlock AI for biology. Role descriptionWe are turning DNA into a commodity, and a commodity wins on cost and reliability. The Head of R&D owns the roadmap that drives our cost per base-pair down and our product envelope out: longer sequences, harder sequences (repeats, extreme GC, homopolymers), lower error rates, faster turnaround.Our Head of Production and their production associates run the factory today; you and your Scientists decide what it will be able to make next year. You will run a tight loop between research and production: prototype a method at the bench, prove it at pilot scale with real customer orders, then transfer it to manufacturing with the specs, QC gates and documentation that let it run without you. You report to the founders and will be the company's senior scientific voice with customers, partners and investors.This is a company-defining role. We will give you the autonomy to do your life's best work, and the room to grow into the leader who sets the scientific direction of Abstract Bio. What you will doOwn the cost curve. Keep widening our 4-10x cost advantage, proving each lever with data before it reaches production.Expand what we can make. Push to longer, harder, higher-fidelity DNA, and build the sequence-difficulty models that tell sales what to promise.Look past DNA. Pick our first RNA or protein product and build the proof of concept on our DNA platform.Run the research-to-production loop. Set the stage gates from bench to pilot to manufacturing; you own success after transfer, not just before.Build the R&D team. Hire the first scientists and keep their work logged so our computational scientists can learn from it.Be the scientific face of the company. Represent our science to customers, partners and investors, and judge which new technologies are worth betting on. What you need to succeedYou have made DNA at scale. You have deep, hands-on experience in oligo synthesis, gene assembly and error correction, and a PhD or equivalent depth.You have shipped a method, not just published one. At least one of your protocols runs in production without you in the room.You lead from the bench. You hire, coach and let go, and still run the critical experiment yourself when needed.You think in cost per unit. Every experiment has a number attached: dollars per base-pair, error rate per kb.You move fast and stay calm. You iterate fast with proper controls, think clearly under stress, and explain decisions in plain language. Nice-to-havesYou are a sequencing wizard. You have used long-read and short-read sequencing (ONT, PacBio, Illumina) for QC at scale, and you know how to read a run to fix a chemistry problem.You have seen the next thing coming. Hands-on exposure to enzymatic DNA synthesis, new assembly techniques, error-correction innovations and an informed view on which of them matter in the next two years.You can multiply yourself. You are a magnet for talent, with a bench of rigorous former colleagues who would follow you to the right opportunity, especially if you are the one sounding the horn. If you've read this far, start your motivation message with the words "Cost curve".