Senior Scientist / Engineer or Director of Fermentation

Job Description

NovoNutrients transforms waste industrial CO2 into feed and food system ingredients, through industrial biotech, and biological innovation. NovoNutrients is advancing a circular economy for feed, food and water: we minimize waste by using reclaimed emissions from biogenic and industrial sources as a feedstock.

NovoNutrients is looking for a seasoned fermentation leader to join our expanding team in Sunnyvale, CA. The Director of Fermentation will lead the development of a cost-effective and robust fermentation process involving optimization and scale-up for an expanding portfolio of products, while also building and leading a diverse team of scientists and engineers.

This is a unique opportunity to join a small and growing team as we work to address environmental challenges for a more sustainable future. If you are fueled by a desire to create meaningful positive impact, enjoy working on technically challenging problems, and thrive in a dynamic, creative and collaborative team-based environment, come join us!

Your responsibilities will include:

• Provide strategic and operational leadership for fermentation activities. Lead the design, implementation and analysis of fermentation process development activities for a suite of products across a variety of scales, ranging from bench scale to commercial scale.
• Hire, inspire and lead a group of fermentation scientists and engineers, including 24/7 fermentation operations
• Continuously identify and implement cutting edge technologies to drive cost effective innovation
• Develop and implement new scale-down methods in the fermentation process to enable cost-effective and predictive process scale-up. Apply DOE based approaches where necessary.
• Lead development of gas mass transfer and kinetic modeling, combined with stoichiometry, to predict and optimize fermentation process across scales
• Design small scale fermentation models to enable rapid strain characterization at medium to high throughput experimentation
• Work with relevant stakeholders to identify fermentation process requirements that enable effective downstream processing for product separation and purification
• Analyze data, document results, develop SOPs and write reports. Communicate and present scientific and technical information within an area of expertise to a cross functional audience.
• Lead internal and external technology transfer projects
• Develop and foster collaborative and inclusive relationships with both internal partners and external stakeholders on process development and scale up
• Ensure all operations are designed and performed with safety-first philosophy
  
  

Desired skills and experience:

• Doctor of Philosophy with at least 10 years of relevant industrial fermentation experience, or Master of Science with at least 12 years of relevant industrial fermentation experience, or Bachelor of Science with at least 15 years of relevant industrial fermentation experience
• Proven successful track record in developing novel fermentation processes and scale up and scale down to/from lab/pilot/demo/commercial scale
• Experience in leading teams of scientists and research associates in a time bound and milestone driven environment
• Experience running fermenters including setup, sampling, process development (including downstream processing), and troubleshooting hardware and software
• Expertise in mass transfer and kinetic modeling.
• Prior experience with gas fermentation and chemoautotrophy is preferred, but not required
• Experience using statistics and design-of-experiments based approaches to strengthen experimental design and enable robust data analysis
• Excellent leadership, organizational, communication, and interpersonal skills, with a strong execution focus.
• Ability to collaborate in a core value driven team culture
  
  

Our facilities are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Sunnyvale, CA.

Legal authorization to work in the U.S. is required for this position. NovoNutrients is not able to sponsor individuals for employment visas for this position at this time.

By taking NovoNutrients gas fermentation processes from floor-scale to near-term pilot to eventual commercial scales, we are creating low-carbon feed and food sources for the planet. We use bacteria that can capture CO2 using hydrogen energy, to produce food and feed products. NovoNutrients operates one of the world’s leading and largest hydrogen-based biosynthesis laboratories, with bioreactors from 250ml to 55L. We have successfully developed and scaled non-GMO single cell protein and created GMO bacterial expression products. The company has developed core IP and is preparing to deploy pilot scale systems in the near term.

Company Description

By taking NovoNutrients gas fermentation processes from floor-scale to near-term pilot to eventual commercial scales, we are creating low-carbon feed and food sources for the planet. We use bacteria that can capture CO2 using hydrogen energy, to produce food and feed products. NovoNutrients operates one of the world’s leading and largest hydrogen-based biosynthesis laboratories, with bioreactors from 250ml to 55L. We have successfully developed and scaled non-GMO single cell protein and created GMO bacterial expression products. The company has developed core IP and is preparing to deploy pilot scale systems in the near term.

By taking NovoNutrients gas fermentation processes from floor-scale to near-term pilot to eventual commercial scales, we are creating low-carbon feed and food sources for the planet. We use bacteria that can capture CO2 using hydrogen energy, to produce food and feed products. NovoNutrients operates one of the world’s leading and largest hydrogen-based biosynthesis laboratories, with bioreactors from 250ml to 55L. We have successfully developed and scaled non-GMO single cell protein and created GMO bacterial expression products. The company has developed core IP and is preparing to deploy pilot scale systems in the near term.