Research Associate I, S2 Screening

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 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. Indigo Carbon, 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.

Core to our microbial discovery pipeline are varied in vitro and in planta screens to understand the activities and mechanism of action of our microbial product candidates. To support these efforts, our Microbial Sourcing and Evaluation team seeks a skilled Research Associate who 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:

• Review and become familiar with all in vitro  assays run by the team, and take over pipeline execution of multiple assays
• Generating quality screening data to pipeline team
• Develop data summaries and visualizations, and technical reports for use by lab members and project teams

Technical Expertise:

• Have demonstrated success in assay development; able to quickly review current SOPs for the in vitro screens and propose ways to improve or automate
• Fluent in aseptic technique, and comfortable with cultivation of diverse bacterial and fungal strains
• Extract value from assay data; own specific projects in coordination with scientists to identify microbial candidates to move through to next stage in pipeline

Data Integrity:

• Run data analysis pipelines to analyze raw data and identify hits
• Become familiar with pipelines to ensure that screening data meets Quality Control metrics and is uploaded to master database
• Extract value from assay data for strain advancement decisions

Competencies:

• Keen attention to detail
• Excellent communicator
• Demonstrated ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ever-changing project environment
• 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
• Ability to troubleshoot technical challenges
• Strong understanding of microbial physiology

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Microbiology, Biochemistry, Plant Science, or related field with 2+ years' industry experience in assay development or screening
• Experience in data management/data governance
• Proven track record developing and running microbial or biochemical assays in high-throughput
• Experience with data analysis of large data sets and hit identification
• Experience in sterile technique and bacterial/fungal culture techniques

Indigo is committed to living our values, specifically “creating a work environment where everyone feels respected, connected, and has opportunities to learn and grow.” As part of living our values, we strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone feels they can be themselves and has an equal opportunity of succeeding.