Protein Engineer - Biosensors
San Francisco Bay Area$120k - $215kFull-timePosted 1mo ago
About the role
Protein Engineer - Biosensors role designing, building, and optimizing proteins that translate neuronal activity into interpretable imaging signals for next-generation brain-computer interfaces. Collaborates with machine learning and other disciplines to push performance of protein-based biosensors and enable in vivo applications.
Responsibilities
- Design and implement biosensor engineering strategies — from rational and computational design to directed evolution and combinatorial libraries — to push the performance frontier of protein-based biosensors.
- Build and characterize protein variants at high throughput to test and iterate hypotheses rapidly and rigorously: implement and optimize scalable workflows from library generation, expression in in vitro systems such as mammalian cell lines, to standard and custom assays.
- Collaborate with our machine learning team to establish models linking sequences and structures to function, guide the generation of future constructs, and augment our intuition.
- Explore the mechanisms behind complex biomolecules and translate that understanding into creative, out-of-the-box designs (with the support of our biochemists, structural biologists, and computational teams).
- Develop novel screening and validation methods to further accelerate the entire design-build-iterate loop and ensure a smooth transition toward in vivo applications.
Qualifications
- PhD in Bioengineering, Biophysics, Biochemistry, or a related field, or equivalent experience leading research projects end-to-end
- Experience working on biosensors or other proteins with novel functionality
- Proficiency in library construction, protein expression in mammalian cells, and standard characterization
- Comfort with computational approaches for protein engineering and understanding fundamental principles
- Mechanistic thinker with strong biophysical intuition
- Experience with dynamic, multi-state proteins and/or complex protein assemblies
- Collaborative communication across disciplines
- Eagerness for 0->1 innovations and fast-paced frontier-science work
Skills
Required:Protein engineeringLibrary constructionProtein expression in mammalian cellsHigh-throughput screening/assaysBiophysics intuitionCollaborative communication
Nice to have:Computational protein engineering
Last updated Sep 16, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Merge Labs
Introducing Merge Labs
Meet Merge Labs – a research lab with the long-term mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency, and experience.
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