Licensing Manager

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.

The Licensing Manager will work closely with Product Management, technical staff and Legal to present opportunities from the Indigo pipeline to external licensing partners and execute on transactions that are strategic and impactful to Indigo. This is a highly visible and strategic role within the organization. This role will require balanced focus on internal and external stakeholders to ensure new technology and commercial opportunities are realized. The primary deliverable will be moving new opportunities through the process to deliver on the business strategy.

Responsibilities:

Biological Products Out-Licensing

• Manage relationship between Indigo and target crop input providers and/or seed companies
  
  • Build partner specific strategies and presentations to promote Indigo products with external partners
  • Build relationships with prospective licensing partners through virtual and face to face meetings.
  • Track partnership milestones and deliverables
  • Coordinate biological product delivery and follow through for commercial partner field trialing
  • Help create product profiles that specifically support successful out-licensing and provide guidance to internal R&D stakeholders.
  • Work with Product Manager to forecast licensing revenue
  • Work with legal to coordinate contractual agreements.

Biological Product Life Cycle Extension

• Research and develop networks in new markets that can benefit from Indigo products
  • Stay abreast of biologicals industry trends and corporate M&A
  • Expand product life cycle by growing into other verticals
  • Maintain a broad network of business development and licensing professionals.

Technology In-Licensing

• Identify and facilitate new in-bound microbial product and related technology licensing opportunities
  • Represent Indigo in external technology review meetings.
  • Work with legal to coordinate contractual agreements.
  • Work with Product Management and other R&D stakeholders to evaluate technology strategic fit.

Understands and embodies our mission & core values

• Excited by Indigo’s mission; believes that Indigo can fundamentally change the agriculture industry; can clearly articulate passion for our mission and values
• Optimistic and innovative; solution-oriented; shows no signs of cynicism
• Will be widely viewed as someone who personifies our core values, is committed to them, and leans on them when making decisions. Specifically:
  • Demonstrates a track record of high integrity - doing the right thing, owning mistakes, conducting oneself honestly
  • Values, communicates and interacts with others with high levels of transparency and respect

Competencies:

• Well-organized and has history of delivering results under ambiguity in a fast-paced environment
• Proven track record of managing and closing licensing relationships
• Communicates seamlessly across R&D and Commercial business units
• Entrepreneurial mindset as it comes to creating partnerships with key decision makers and sourcing and identifying targeted technologies.
• Able to prioritize tasks to achieve goals
• Flexible and able to shift priorities when needed
• Customer centric approach

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant field required (Microbiology, Agronomy, Business, Life Sciences) with 4+ years relevant experience or graduate education (MBA or PhD preferred)
• Willingness to travel up to 20% in accordance with public health & safety guidelines
• Experience in agriculture industry preferred
• A basic understanding of and/or exposure to intellectual property is required
• Experience working with a multi-national team is required

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