Senior Research Associate I

Indigo is a company dedicated to harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet. With a vision of creating a world where farming is an economically desirable and accessible profession, Indigo Ag works alongside its growers to apply natural approaches, conserve resources for future generations, and grow healthy food for all. Indigo’s Biological Products, Marketplace, and Carbon offerings improve grower profitability, environmental sustainability, and consumer health. Indigo Marketplace is a platform connecting growers with a network of buyers to secure optimal prices for their crops and offers hands-on control of a grower’s business through a range of pricing tools, real-time national bid discovery, and automated grain sales. Carbon by Indigo is a platform paying growers for increases in soil carbon content and decreases in greenhouse gas emissions. It helps growers realize additional revenue, healthier soils, and a more resilient farm by participation in a market of high-quality carbon credits – supported by rigorous quantification standards. The company is headquartered in Boston, MA, with additional offices in Memphis, TN, Research Triangle Park, NC, Basel, Switzerland, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and São Paulo, Brazil.

Indigo’s Biological Products organization develops products based upon our deep understanding of the plant microbiome. The company has commercialized such products for cotton, wheat, barley, corn, soybeans, and rice in North America, Latin America, and Europe under the biotrinsic™ brand. Our R&D and product development teams are working to continue to develop products that address the growing number of abiotic and biotic stresses that crops experience worldwide.

The role of the Senior Research Associate, Microbial Sourcing and Evaluation will be to assist a team of scientists and research assistants by growing and preparing microbial biomass, 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:

  • Run day to day biomass preparation of a diverse set of microbes for testing in assays
  • Manage technicians for media preparation and dish washing activities
  • Review all assays run by the team and participate in weekly activities
  • Generate quality screening data to pipeline team
  • Develop reports, charts, graphs, and tables for the use by lab members and project teams

• Technical Expertise:
  • 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
  • Continually improve upon biomass preparation, media preparation, and dish washing processes
  • Work cross-functionally with other teams at Indigo to prepare biomass as needed

• Data Integrity:
  • Review data generated in biomass production and assays
  • Generate data that meets Quality Control metrics and is uploaded to master database

Competencies:

• Expertise in sterile technique is a must
• Keen attention to detail
• Experience cultivating a diverse array of microbes
• 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

Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Microbiology, Biochemistry, Plant Science, or related field OR Bachelor's degree with 2+ years' industry experience in assay development or screening
• Experience in data management/data governance
• Proven track record growing a diverse set of microbes
• Experience running microbial or biochemical assays in high throughput preferred
• Expertise using standard automation including liquid handling equipment
• Experience with data analysis of large data sets and hit identification

We’re building the technology to feed the world and fight climate change. We believe that through teamwork we can achieve more to benefit all of agriculture: from farmers to consumers to the planet. Game changers don't fit in a box. The requirements listed above are examples of what we think enables success in this role, but we recognize the impossibility of fully capturing a singularly perfect description, and we believe in the power of diversified and creative displays of skills and qualifications. We embrace unconventional. We embrace creativity. We embrace a challenge to the status quo. If the specifications in the list below aren’t an exact match... great! Apply, be you, and be proud that you aren’t ordinary (we certainly aren’t!).

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status