Research Associate Biology, High Throughput Experimentation

Proteins are the molecular machines of life, used for many therapeutic, diagnostic, chemical, agricultural and food applications. Designing and optimizing proteins takes a lot of expert knowledge and manual effort, through the use of custom computational and biological tools.

Machine learning is revolutionizing this space, by enabling high-fidelity protein models. At Cradle, we offer a software platform for AI-guided discovery and optimization of proteins, so that biologists can design proteins faster and at scale. We are already used by clients across biopharma, biotech, agri-tech, food-tech, and academia.

We're an experienced team of around 90 people. We've built many successful products before and have enough funding for multiple years of runway. We are distributed across two main locations, Zurich and Amsterdam, and are focused on building the best possible team culture.

We offer our employees a very competitive salary, a generous equity stake in the company and a wide range of benefits and career progression opportunities.

For this role, we are looking for a motivated Research Associate to strengthen our Bioengineering team. This team is responsible for developing and running high-throughput workflows for building DNA libraries, expressing and purifying proteins, and running characterization studies (e.g. enzyme activity or binding assays). We’ve built a wet-lab infrastructure with a lot of high-throughput automation, enabling much more scalable and cost-effective experimentation, working hand in hand with our machine learning algorithms. Next to more established methods, we’re also developing workflows that are based on fundamentally different techniques than currently is mainstream.

As a Research Associate, you'll join a diverse team of researchers to collaboratively execute and continuously improve novel wet lab methods for our DNA construction and protein optimization pipeline. If you enjoy running molecular biology workflows, love to tinker, and want to be a part of building the next-generation platform for making biotechnological products - please apply!

As a Research Associate in the Bioengineering team, you will:

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  Run workflows for DNA synthesis and assembly, protein expression, protein purification, and protein characterisation.

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  Effectively document and communicate results, successes, and challenges in a cross-functional environment.

Missing one or two points from the list below? No worries, if you're excited about this role and meet most of these criteria, we definitely want to hear from you.

• BSc or equivalent experience in molecular biology, biochemistry, enzymology, metabolic engineering, biophysics, or related fields.

• Demonstrated experience with standard molecular biology techniques such as cloning, in vitro and/or in vivo protein expression systems (e.g. E. coli, B. subtilis, P. pastoris, CHO or HEK cell lines, cell extracts).

• Motivated to work in a 100% laboratory based role.

• Excitement to learn, contribute, and drive innovation in an early stage startup environment. Having an appetite for its ambiguity and fast pace.

• Strong verbal and written communication skills in English. Proactively sharing results, successes and challenges in a cross-functional environment.

• Ability to run multiple projects simultaneously while ensuring that process steps are documented, and physical/digital data are organized.

Experience with one or more of the following would be an advantage:

• Protein purification techniques (e.g. affinity tag purification).

• Assay development for enzymatic activity or antibody binding assays.

• Protein expression in cell-free systems (cell extracts, myTXTL, PURE).

• Next-generation sequencing techniques (Illumina, Nanopore, PacBio).

• Classical high-throughput laboratory automation (robotic liquid handlers, plate readers).

• High-throughput advanced cloning technologies, such as site-directed mutagenesis, Gibson Assembly, and Golden-Gate Cloning.

We're quite open about what we work on in our BioEngineering team. If you'd like to learn a bit more before applying, check out blog posts from our team (link 1, link 2) or watch the webinar we did with Benchling (link).

Cradle evaluates all candidates based on merit, regardless of sex, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background, or any other aspect of identity. We maintain zero tolerance for discrimination and actively encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.

Cradle uses an applicant tracking system that includes basic AI-assisted features which may generate scores or rankings based on how applications match a job description. These outputs are not used to make or meaningfully influence hiring decisions — all candidates are evaluated through a thorough, human-led review by our recruiting team.

Please be aware that scammers are posing as us in order to get your personal details or money. We only communicate via @cradle.bio email addresses, we only make job offers after having met you in person at our office in Zurich or Amsterdam, and we never ask you to pay for anything during the interview process.