Principal Scientist, Upstream Development

USA - New Jersey - Rahway

The Biologics Process Research & Development organization within our Company Research Labs is responsible for developing the drug substance manufacturing processes for our Company's biologics pipeline. We work closely with colleagues in Discovery, Pre-clinical and Early Development to rapidly develop manufacturing processes for biotherapeutics and efficiently manufacture material to supply clinical trials. We are also responsible for commercial process development and development and implementation of new manufacturing technologies. We work with our partners in our Company Manufacturing Division to commercialize and launch new products.

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced individual to join our Upstream Development Department as a Principal Scientist. In this role, the successful candidate will work closely with scientists in the Upstream Development Department to develop and refine technical strategy related to next generation processing for assets in early- and late-stage clinical development. Applicants must have effective organizational and multi-tasking skills, demonstrated excellent scientific leadership, and superior written and oral communications abilities. A track record of leveraging data science and digital tools for delivering impactful solutions to complex problems are distinguishing. Evidence of strong cross-functional collaboration, experience successfully mentoring junior scientist, leading projects, and strong external presence through scientific excellence are expected.

The successful candidate will contribute to CMC development of our Company's pipeline, playing an active role in development of cell culture processes and transfer to clinical and commercial manufacturing sites. She/He will also develop strategies for process and pipeline-facing innovation.

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  Leading biologic upstream process development for first-in-human and commercial processes by efficiently developing high yield, robust and scalable cell culture processes.

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  Providing technical direction for process development, characterization, commercialization, and regulatory filing activities to ensure a smooth and clear path to successful PPQs an BLAs for our company pipeline.

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  Advancing upstream platform process technical strategy and championing creative process improvement initiatives

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  Initiating new collaborations to assess new technologies and industry strategies with relevance to our Company.

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  Collaborating with academia, industry partners, and vendors to drive development, innovation and adoption of new process technologies with broad impact to projects or platform.

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  Keeping up to date with the external patent and literature environment; actively presents and publishes externally and pursues patenting strategies.

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  Supervising, coaching and educating junior scientists

Ph.D. with 8+ years of industry experience, Master with 10+ years industry experience, bachelor's with 14+ years industry in Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, Biochemistry or a related field

• Experience with state-of-the-art cell culture processes including intensified inoculum and perfusion process development.

• Experience with early- and late-stage commercial process development, technology transfer, scale-down model qualification and process characterization.

• Experience with high throughput microbioreactor systems, and advanced in situ analytics for process monitoring and control.

• Expertise in media development, media/solution chemistry.

• Background in data science approaches related to cell culture and predictive modeling e.g., metabolic flux analysis (MFA), omics, machine learning; experience integrating PAT efforts) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

• Experience leading cross functional, program development teams.

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Where required by law, the compensation range for this role is provided below.

The salary range for the primary location of this role is:

This range reflects the Company's reasonable expectation of the base salary applicable to this role at the time of posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs. The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.