Research Associate, Vector Engineering

Are you ready to play a key role in Gordian’s discovery pipeline by producing the AAV vectors that power every one of our in vivo screens?

You will operate as a key member of the team producing AAV for all of Gordian, reliably executing laboratory protocols, learning quickly, and contributing to projects that improve important workflows. You will balance multiple projects at once, which makes excellent documentation and communication across teams essential, and you will build the habits that drive success at Gordian: curiosity, coachability, strong execution and deep ownership of outcomes.

About Gordian

Gordian Biotechnology is a therapeutics company designed as a machine that systematically reveals the right way to cure age-related diseases: a machine for creating time.

To do that, we built Mosaic Screening, which makes causal validation both grounded in human pathophysiology and radically more scalable in living diseased tissue. It lets us measure the causal effects of hundreds of perturbations directly in vivo, revealing the best therapeutic targets across vast target spaces (more details on our website and in our preprint). The machine is already producing wins: across six disease areas, we have mapped nearly as many targets as the field reported in 20 years, advanced a novel osteoarthritis candidate into IND-enabling studies, and started an obesity drug-discovery collaboration with Pfizer.

But there are still many diseases left to cure, and expanding the machine to tackle them starts with its most important resource: its people and culture. We work as a team, using clear goals, open communication, and direct feedback to make autonomous decisions with the bigger picture in mind. We aim for extraordinary outcomes, continually improving how we work and acting on what will create the most progress, even in unknown territory. We have deliberately designed an environment to sustain that standard: few standing meetings, hands-on experimentation and pre-mortems, weekly team lunches, and unlimited vacation that people are encouraged to use. You can dive deeper into our culture here.

This way of working has been crucial to Gordian’s success. And every Mosaic screen runs on AAV, which is where you come in.

About the Role

Your primary mission as Vector Engineering research associate is to play a key role in the execution and workflows responsible for producing AAV for all of Gordian. You’ll contribute to the production of AAV vectors through adherent and suspension HEK293 cell transfection techniques and a suite of scalable AAV purification techniques (iodixanol ultracentrifugation, depth filtration, TFF, FPLC).

In your first month, you will shadow team members to learn the Vector team’s adherent and suspension production protocols, documentation standards, and workflows. You will take on routine lab tasks such as media prep and media changes with care and attention to detail, with no labeling errors or sample swaps and clear, detailed records in our ELN. You will learn how the Vector team interfaces with the groups that request AAV, and help our HFpEF and CKD programs by producing critical AAV vector.

Within three months, you will independently run core production tasks such as HEK293 cell splits, transfections, and harvests, and perform purification steps such as iodixanol ultracentrifugation and FPLC with limited supervision. You will have expanded your understanding of AAV biology, particularly the serotypes Gordian uses and how they are produced and purified. You will own weekly media forecasting and routine reagent ordering with no outages, and calculate AAV requirements for project requests by referencing historical production data in Gordian’s databases. You will communicate progress, blockers, and handoffs clearly, surface risks early, and close loops without repeated prompting. You will also have identified a concrete process improvement and will be designing and executing a mini-project to address it, such as testing protocol optimization ideas.

At the six-month mark, you will independently execute all existing Vector SOPs with little or no supervision, faster than when you started, while maintaining excellent record keeping and communication. You will be the sole owner of two Vector areas of responsibility, TC hood organization and shaking-incubator maintenance, with no lapses in coverage. You will have completed your first mini-project, a meaningful improvement that helps the team move faster, communicate better, or execute more robustly, and will be bringing further ideas to the Vector team’s weekly meetings.

And You

You want a chance to do your best work, immerse yourself and excel, alongside people who will inspire you and whom you’ll be excited to spend your days with.

You want to play a key role in an early-stage startup: a fast-paced environment full of both uncertainty and new challenges, demanding relentless resourcefulness, but full of opportunities and excitement.

You are organized and detail-oriented, with a history of managing multiple time-sensitive projects at once, collaborating across teams, and keeping a thorough lab notebook.

You have a background in biology and hands-on serological pipetting experience, and you are capable of making an accurate serial dilution.

You are curious, coachable, and driven: you take initiative, dig into problems, and own your outcomes.

You can articulate how this role fits into your long-term plans and why Gordian’s mission matters to you.

Bonus points if you have:

• Tissue culture experience
• Wet lab experience such as transfections, qPCR, Western blot, or SDS-PAGE
• Experience with flow systems such as FPLC, TFF, or depth filtration
• Previous experience with AAV, lentivirus, or gene therapy

The Details

Gordian aims to provide everything you need to thrive. Beyond our community and science, you’ll have enough equity to be a true stakeholder in the company, competitive salary, full health/dental/vision/life insurance, 401k with match, onsite lunch paid for 3 days a week, an onsite gym, whatever vacation you need to be at your peak, remote work flexibility, and access to world-class mentors and advisors to support your professional growth. Our building is in the heart of the biotech capital of South San Francisco.