About the position
At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced scientist to join our Lentivirus Small Scale PD team as a Principal Scientist. You will be responsible for integrating into the upstream process development team and lead, contribute, and advance process development of lentiviral vector-based products for CGT within DPDS, API. You will have a meaningful role in the planning, prioritization, innovation, and execution of early or late phase lentiviral projects. You will identify and conceptualize new ideas, designing, planning and leading experiments, prioritizing areas of focus based on business objectives, and analyzing complex issues by problem-solving and turning solutions into reality. You will be responsible for interpreting experimental data, and then summarizing and reporting the findings to the project team, generating technical documents, and when applicable, presenting to senior management. Along with cell therapy process subject matter experiments, you will interact and work with internal or external GMP clinical or commercial manufacturing sites.
Responsibilities
- Integrate into the upstream process development team and lead, contribute, and advance process development of lentiviral vector-based products for CGT within DPDS, API.
- Plan, prioritize, innovate, and execute early or late phase lentiviral projects.
- Identify and conceptualize new ideas, designing, planning and leading experiments.
- Prioritize areas of focus based on business objectives and analyze complex issues.
- Interpret experimental data, summarize and report findings to the project team.
- Generate technical documents and present to senior management when applicable.
- Interact and work with internal or external GMP clinical or commercial manufacturing sites.
Requirements
- BS or MS degree in Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Biochemistry, or other equivalent with 6-8 years of experience; or a PhD with 4+ years of post-doctoral and/or relevant industry experience.
- Broad knowledge in viral vector process development, preferably upstream process development.
- Good understanding of cell culture parameters.
- Hands-on experience with aseptic techniques, cell culture in shake flasks, Wave bioreactors, and bioreactor systems.
- Experience with cell counting/monitoring methods.
- Highly organized, meticulous, and capable of handling multiple projects in parallel.
- Strong analytical problem-solving skills.
- Experience maintaining accurate and detailed records of experimental procedures, data, and results.
- Excellent presentation, verbal communication, and scientific/technical writing skills.
- Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.
- Ability to operate effectively in a dynamic work environment and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
Nice-to-haves
- Familiarity with analytical methods typically used in the manufacture and characterization of viral-based products.
- Ability to make timely decisions and operate efficiently in times of ambiguity.
- Previous experience working in a CMC or regulatory setting.
- Previous experience with technology transfer of a bioprocess to clinical or commercial GMP manufacturing.
