Product Lead, Raman Spectroscopy

Arcadia Science•Emeryville, CA

9d•Onsite

About The Position

We are Arcadia Science, an evolutionary biology company founded and led by scientists. Our mission is to turn natural innovations into real-world solutions by developing systematic and quantitative approaches to leveraging biology for therapeutics R&D. We share our research as openly as possible to accelerate discovery and make our work broadly useful. We're hiring the first Product Engineer for the Foundry, a division at Arcadia that reports directly to the CEO. The Foundry sits at the interface between R&D and commercial deployment, taking validated tools and new capabilities from the research team and productionizing them for broader use. The first users are internal researchers, who will inform development for future use by external partners. The Foundry's first focus is Raman spectroscopy, where we have developed meaningful capabilities that need to be professionalized: making the hardware production-ready, designing and building user-friendly operating and analysis software, and delivering a setup intuitive enough for any researcher in the organization to use without much friction. From there, you will help define what external deployment looks like, working with partners who want access to these capabilities inside their own labs and companies. The position is full-time and on-site at our Emeryville, California headquarters.

Requirements

PhD or equivalent depth in a relevant field such as electrical engineering, optical engineering, physics, bioengineering, or similar.
2+ years of industry experience developing and scaling hardware or instrumentation.
Experience managing a small technical team.
Experience in product development and design.
Demonstrated ability to take something from prototype to a robust, usable state, with attention to the full user experience.
Hands-on experience with some combination of optical systems, spectroscopy, instrument software, lab automation, and mechanical design.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with Raman spectroscopy.
Experience building data processing and ML pipelines for spectral or image analysis.
Hands-on experience in biological or biochemical assays.
Experience navigating user or customer relationships in a technical context.
Experience with product development, i.e. user-centered design, market research, customer outreach, etc.
Experience developing open source designs and protocols.

Responsibilities

Assess Arcadia's current Raman spectroscopy capabilities and define a roadmap for productionizing the hardware and software setup.
Work closely with the technical team to understand the underlying technology and what needs to change for a product context.
Get familiar with sample preparation and assay challenges associated with Raman use.
Conduct user interviews and observational research with users to understand workflow needs and pain points, translating findings directly into design and development priorities.
Build and iterate on an internal deployment accessible to researchers without specialized instrumentation backgrounds.
Establish feedback loops with internal users to continuously improve the experience.
Help build a small product-focused team around this capability.
Own the end-to-end product design process for new capabilities, from user research and interface design through to deployment and iteration.
Define and execute external deployment, including how Arcadia's Raman capabilities can be integrated in partner labs and companies.
Troubleshoot sample preparation and help develop critical Raman-based assays for external partners.
Help shape the operating and financial model of the Foundry as it grows.