Research Associate, Upstream Development

About us

At the forefront of farming and food, UPSIDE Foods is innovating new ways to produce real meat, without the need to breed, feed, and slaughter animals. Our process begins with an animal cell, which is cultivated and harvested as meat. UPSIDE Foods is a mission-driven company focused on bringing to meat lovers an authentic product that is truly humane, sustainably produced, nutritious, and delicious! We are now expanding our team of dedicated professionals across disciplines to make better meat for a better world.

About this job

The Upstream Development (UD) Research Associate will be responsible for performing screening and early stage process development experiments while also aiding in medium-scale bioprocessing endeavours. The UD Research Associate should be capable of troubleshooting and executing experiments independently while employing critical thinking and organizational skills. This laboratory-based position requires performing experiments/assays on a daily basis with relatively high throughput, followed by analysis and interpretation of the data, presentation of findings to the relevant teams, and suggestion of follow-up experiments. You should be tenacious and adaptable, and you should be a team player

Duties include

• Cell/tissue culture activities including thawing, culturing, freezing, and subcloning
• Development of cell culture media, feeds, and processes
• Reagent/media preparation and inventory management
• Performing routine cell culture assays (e.g. immuno-staining/imaging, protein/DNA quantification)
• Utilization of high-throughput cell culture and imaging platforms
• Participation in medium-scale bioprocessing procedures for cell and tissue production
• Proficient data collection, management, interpretation, and presentation
• Provide input for further experiments based on data and objectives
• Develop new, and refine existing, procedures for relevant processes
• Maintains laboratory notebooks with detailed experimental designs and results

About you

• Bachelor’s Degree in relevant scientific/technical area OR Associate’s degree in relevant scientific/technical area with 1-2+ years of relevant work experience 
• Working knowledge of, and hands-on experience with, cell culture processes 
• Competent with Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word  
• Strong written and oral communication skills and comfort with frequent presentation of results to the team
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, evolving, and cross-functional environment
• Comfortable developing a scientific knowledge base by learning new methods from peers, seminars, and scientific literature
• Fosters a team environment by  collaborating scientifically with team members

Desirable skills

• Experience with statistical (e.g JMP, GraphPad, R) and image analysis (e.g. ImageJ) software
• Experience with common cell-culture assays (e.g. immuno-staining/imaging, protein/DNA quantification)

UPSIDE Foods is an equal opportunity employer and we 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.