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Scientist - Synthetic Biology

Merge Labs· Bioengineering
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San Francisco Bay Area$120k - $165kFull-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Scientist in Synthetic Biology designing, building, and optimizing genetic payloads for brain-machine interfaces, with focus on mammalian gene circuits, delivery compatibility, and in vivo validation.

Responsibilities

  • Design and implement mammalian genetic-circuit strategies to control component stoichiometry, expression level, timing, cell-type specificity, and cellular burden in multicomponent payloads.
  • Build and characterize synthetic constructs at high throughput using modular libraries of promoters, UTRs, introns, polyadenylation signals, codon usage, gene order, polycistronic elements, and other regulatory sequences.
  • Develop compact expression-control systems such as inducible switches, dual-vector logic, feedback circuits, and microRNA-based regulation to safeguard against overexpression and off-target expression.
  • Engineer host-cell compatibility by addressing protein trafficking and turnover, proteostasis, metabolic burden, cellular stress, intracellular immune sensing, and transgene silencing; evaluate chaperone co-expression or degradation-control strategies where appropriate.
  • Translate expression requirements into payload architectures that are compatible with viral and non-viral delivery technologies.
  • Characterize expression and function in mammalian cells and neurons using quantitative readouts for dynamic range, leakiness, kinetics, stoichiometry, protein stability, cellular burden, stress responses, transgene silencing, and potential toxicity.
  • Evaluate lead payloads in animal models in collaboration with our in vivo operations team.

Qualifications

  • A PhD in Synthetic Biology, Bioengineering, Molecular Biology, or a related field, or have equivalent experience leading research projects end-to-end.
  • A strong record of designing and experimentally validating mammalian gene circuits or tunable expression systems.
  • Proficiency in molecular cloning, library construction, mammalian cell expression, and quantitative characterization using methods such as flow cytometry, qPCR, sequencing, imaging, or functional assays.
  • Experience establishing systematic or high-throughput construct-testing workflows.
  • Think mechanistically: you are motivated by understanding how things work, not just that they work.
  • The independence to define a research strategy, troubleshoot at the bench, and drive ambiguous programs from concept through interpretable data.
  • Feel joy in collaboration and communicate naturally with experts across disciplines.
  • Are energized by 0->1 innovations and want to be part of a fast-paced team working on frontier scientific and technical problems.

Skills

Required:Mammalian gene circuitsMolecular cloningHigh-throughput construct testingQuantitative characterizationCollaboration across disciplines

Benefits

  • For more information about hiring at Merge, please visit our Hiring FAQ (link provided in description)
Last updated Sep 30, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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